


In Another Life

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Casefiles, Drama, F/M, Season 1, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-29 16:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15732783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: What if there was no conspiracy?  What if Mulder was just a regular FBI Agent?  What if Scully was just a bureau pathologist?  What would be different?  What would be the same?





	1. Chapter 1

They called it burnout, but in Mulder’s mind, it was boredom, plain and simple.  He was bored of the VCU, bored of the monotony of profiling, bored of standing in front of a room lecturing on behavior patterns of UNSUBs to a room full of greenhorns too cocksure and trigger-happy to pay attention.  His AD wanted him to take a leave of absence, but Mulder wasn’t itching for the kind of change of scenery a vacation could provide. He wanted different cases and a chance to do some real field work; the kind that got his hands dirty.

 

It took some persuasion, but Mulder was able to get himself temporarily loaned out on a few assignments no one seemed to want to touch.  It wasn’t the shit detail that wiretapping was, but he understood right away the files he was given were meant to be a deterrent; a ticket straight back to VCU where he would be a good little profiler monkey until his pension kicked in.  Some of the cases were older and had languished for some time, some a little fresher, but all had the stench of a cold case on them. And, so what? Mulder invited the challenge and found it invigorating. When he resolved six of the ten cases he was given, his temporary loan became permanent and he was transferred to the supervision of AD Walter Skinner.

 

Back when Mulder was fresh from the academy, furiously writing eerily spot-on monographs that would later become case studies for cadets, the joke around the VCU was ‘give it to the Golden Boy,’ whenever they encountered a tough nut to crack.  After his transfer to Skinner, the joke around the bullpen was ‘give it to Spooky,’ whenever they encountered a case that was deemed too weird and difficult to give to anyone else.

 

The last thing Mulder was concerned with were nicknames and office gossip.  He only wanted to do his job and do it well. He knew he could be aloof and difficult to work with, but only when he felt someone wasn’t taking an assignment as seriously as they should.  In the VCU, he worked alone. In the year he’d been under AD Skinner, he’d gone through three partners, all of which he’d gotten along with, but none of whom felt like they were contributing to the partnership, that they were simply along for the ride and couldn’t keep up.  All three were known to defend their ex-partner tooth and nail whenever they were asked what it was like working with Spooky Mulder. All three would declare beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mulder was the best agent in the bureau.

 

Mulder was currently in a partnerless state of flux when the latest file made it to his inbox.  He read the assignment with a bit of initial disappointment to find it had been passed along at the request of Baltimore PD for assistance with profiling a serial killer, but as he dug into the details, it certainly piqued his interest.  Three murders over a six week period, the victims varying in age, race, and gender, with no known connections to each other. The first victim was a college student, found in her dorm room with the windows locked and door bolted. The latest victim from two days ago was an executive in a highrise, high security building, killed in his locked office with nothing to show for it on any security footage.  

 

But, the kicker was, all three victims were found with their livers extracted, no surgical tools detected.  That’s why Mulder received the case, and that’s why he was out the door and on his way to Baltimore before he’d even finished his cup of morning coffee.

 

******

 

By now, Mulder had grown accustomed to his reputation preceding him, and there were two reactions: either he was treated like a celebrity or like a pariah.  Today, it was less of the fan treatment and more disdain. The officer assigned to escort him to the crime scene, Detective Colton, made it pretty clear he was not one for having an FBI agent meddling in his case.  Within thirty seconds, Mulder had the guy pegged as a novice looking for a break. He theorized that law enforcement was the family business and the only way Colton earned his shield was purely through nepotism. It was times like these, in dealing with hothead egomaniacs, that Mulder missed having a partner to run interference.

 

“We’ve already been over the scene with a fine tooth comb,” Colton complained, following Mulder around the victim’s office like an unwanted shadow.

 

“You have,” Mulder answered.  “I haven’t.”

 

“Anything you want to know, you can read in my report.”

 

“Okay, how did the killer get in and out of a locked room undetected by surveillance?”

 

Colton glared at Mulder and put his hands on his hips, moving his suit jacket enough to expose his holstered weapon.  It was all Mulder could do not to roll his eyes as he turned away and put his attention back on the crime scene. He scanned the windows and a closet door at the side of the desk.  He put his hand on the wall and gave a knock every few paces as he circled the perimeter of the room.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” Colton asked.

 

Mulder ignored the detective and continued his perimeter check, his eyes traveling up and down from floor to ceiling so he wouldn’t miss a square inch.  He stopped suddenly and backed up a step. A glint of something in the carpet caught his eye and he bent down to get a closer look. He took out a small kit from his interior breast pocket and used a small pair of tweezers to pick up what looked like a sliver of metal out of the fibers of the rug.  Directly above where he was crouched was a ventilation shaft, the opening no bigger than a shoebox.

 

“You got a fingerprint kit on you, Colton?”

 

“We’ve already fingerprinted everywhere.”

 

“Not everywhere,” Mulder murmured, standing up straight to peer up at the screws fastening the cover to the shaft in place.  A small carton of equipment sat on the floor next to a leather couch against the far wall. Mulder rummaged around amongst the packages of gloves and evidence bags for fingerprint dust.

 

“Not even a toddler could squeeze through that,” Colton sneered.

 

“Someone did,” Mulder answered, stepping back to study the thumbprint he’d revealed on the side of the cover of the shaft.

 

******

 

Mulder knew that Detective Colton was pissed about the fingerprint, but he really didn’t care.  His motive was to solve the case and maybe prevent another murder. Colton’s was to move up the ladder.  While he waited for the slides he’d ordered to be developed, he’d done some digging into Detective Colton.  It turned out his was right; Colton’s father, grandfather, paternal uncle, and older brother were all cops. His father was decorated and served a ten year stint in the military.  Colton barely passed the academy.

 

In addition to his diversion on Colton, he’d taken a deep dive into the MO of the killer and discovered a series of unsolved murders from the 1960s and 1930s, all with liver extractions.  Five victims in 1933 and five victims in 1963 all in the greater Baltimore area, two in Powhatan Mill. If the pattern held, that would mean there would be two more victims now, in 1993. He pulled the files from archives, but he wanted an expert opinion on the results he had in hand.  He knew of just the guy, but it required a trek out to Quantico.

 

Mulder had first come across Chuck Bates during his training at the academy.  The forensic pathologist had a dry, gallows humor that most found distasteful, but Mulder took an instant liking to.  He was shocked by nothing because he’d seen it all. Mulder had once asked him if there was ever an autopsy he wouldn’t do, and Chuck had simply said “my own” and fired up his skull saw, driving Mulder from the room.  It had been a few months since he’d required Chuck’s assistance, but the senior agent was always willing.

 

Knocking his signature ‘shave and a haircut’ on Chuck’s office door, Mulder entered without waiting for a reply.  He stopped short though when instead of Chuck behind the desk, there was a redheaded woman who glanced up at him with a disapproving frown.

 

“May I help you?” the woman asked.

 

“I’m sorry, I was looking for Chuck.  I must not have been paying attention.”

 

“Agent Bates is on leave.  I’m stepping in for him in the interim.”

 

“You?”

 

“Yes.”  The woman stood and crossed her arms defensively.  She was petite, but fierce. Her ire filled the room.

 

“Will he be back any time soon?”

 

“I’m afraid not.  Is there something I can help you with?”

 

“It’s just that...I mean, I’m used to dealing with…”

 

“A man?  I can assure you they do hand out medical degrees to women nowadays and I am equally as competent as every other forensic pathologist in this unit.  If you have a problem with that, I suggest-”

 

“Woah,” Mulder said, putting his hands up in surrender and taking a step back.  “Nothing like that. Chuck and I have a long-standing agreement is all. I bring him something he isn’t likely to have seen before and he makes sure the autopsy bay is well-stocked with smelling salts for when I pass out at the sight of blood.”

 

The woman blinked at him and then her shoulders relaxed and she let her arms drop to her sides.  A faint hint of a blush stained the apples of her cheeks. “You must be Agent Mulder,” she said.

 

“Guilty.”  He extended his hand out to her, but then took it back again as she came out from around the desk.  “You don’t bite, do you?”

 

The blush across her cheeks deepened a little, but she stepped towards him with a little smile.  “Not hard,” she answered, extending her hand. “Dana Scully. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

 

“Rough day?” he asked, shaking her hand up and down more than necessary.

 

“Just another day battling the patriarchy.”

 

“Tell me about it.”

 

She quirked her eyebrow up at him and let go of his hand.  Her eyes drifted to the file folder under his arm and then back up to his face.

 

“I don’t suppose you’d like to take a look at something for me, would you?” he asked.

 

“What have you got?”

 

“Thirteen dead bodies.”

 

Her left eyebrow rose up again and stayed arched.  She put her hand out for the file and he gave it to her, but she waited until she’d walked back to the desk and was seated to open it.  He watched her eyes dart across the pages and then she flipped through a series of black and white photos one at a time, lingering on each and then spreading them out across the desk with the snippets of autopsy reports and news clippings related to each.

 

“What is it you want to know?” she asked.

 

“What can you tell me about liver extraction?”

 

“Obviously with what you have here, liver extraction is the most significant detail of the crime.  The liver possesses regenerative qualities, it cleanses the blood.”

 

“Maybe the killer is taking it as a trophy?  Taking it as a symbolic way to cleanse himself of his own impurities.”

 

“You’ve got reports in here from 1933 and then 30 years later in 1963.  That means you may have not one, but two copycats. What are they after?”

 

“Let me show you something else.”  Mulder went over to the x-ray lightboard hanging on the wall by the desk and flipped it on.  He pulled out a plastic bag from his pocket and shook out the six slides he’d ordered, checking their stamps before pinning one against the board with his thumb and forefinger.

 

Scully got up from the desk and came around to stand next to him.  She leaned close and studied the slide and then looked up at Mulder.

 

“This is a fingerprint I took from the crime scene this morning,” he said.

 

“Rather unusual for a fingerprint.  It’s like the finger has been elongated somehow.  If you go by this, you’d be looking for a killer with ten inch fingers.”

 

“Pretty unique, right?”

 

“Every fingerprint is unique to begin with.”

 

“True.”  Mulder added another slide next to the first, holding them against the board with the tips of his fingers until he displayed all six slides in a row for Scully to see.  “These other five fingerprints were taken from five of the ten prior crime scenes.”

 

“From 1933 and 1963?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“They certainly look similar.”

 

“Similar, or the same?”

 

Scully crossed her arms.  “Agent Mulder, are you suggesting the killer you’re looking for is the same one from 60 years ago?”

 

“Actually, you missed the news clipping reporting on a liver extraction in 1903.  There’s a fingerprint there as well, I just couldn’t get a slide off of it.”

 

“So, what you’re saying is that he-”

 

“Or she,” he interrupted.

 

“Or  _ she _ , would have to be at least 100 years old.  And have the ability to overpower a healthy, six foot two inch businessman.  I don’t know, but that seems highly improbable.”

 

“Improbable, but not impossible.”

 

Scully merely lifted her eyebrow again and stared at Mulder incredulously.  

 

“These fingerprints are a perfect match, by the way,” he added, taking the slides down from the lightboard.

 

“Maybe things aren’t what they seem.”  Scully turned the lightboard off while Mulder dumped the slides back into the plastic bag.

 

“Maybe.  Do you know of any genetic anomalies that would account for elongated fingers?  Maybe even one that would allow for a man or woman to squeeze through a ventilation shaft approximately six by 18 inches?”

 

“I don’t know about squeezing through a ventilation shaft, but there’s Marfan Syndrome.”

 

Mulder removed the small notepad he kept in his breast pocket and flipped it open.  He wrote down the name of the syndrome and a few other notes from what Scully relayed, but at a certain point, the cadence of her voice became distracting.  He wondered how she made the symptoms of what sounded like a disfiguring disease become so melodious.

 

“It’s a genetic disorder that affects the body’s connective tissue caused by a mutation in the gene that directs the production of fibrillan-1.  The result is an increase in a protein called transforming growth factor beta. Common physical features of Marfan’s are long limbs, curved spine, sunken chest, joint flexibility.  Less obvious, but life threatening features are aortic enlargement or collapsed lungs. Eyesight is usually weak and they are susceptible to detached retinas, glaucoma, and cataracts.”

 

“Any problems with the liver?”

 

“None I’m aware of, but the liver contains connective tissue, so it’s possible.”

 

“I’ll look into it.”  He tucked his notepad back into his pocket and began to put the file back together that was spread across the desk.

 

“What’s your next step?”

 

“Baltimore PD thinks they’re looking for a male, twenty-five to thirty, suffering from OCD, looking for an emotional high.  They think he’ll return to the scene of one of his crimes if he doesn’t succeed in finding his next victim soon.”

 

“You don’t agree?”

 

“I think his thrill is derived from the challenge of seemingly impossible entry.  He may need to lie in wait for some time to avoid detection in or…” Mulder stopped in a moment of realization.

 

“Or?”

 

“Scully, you’ve been a big help.  Thanks for your time.” He hurriedly finished throwing the file back together to rush to the door.

 

“Agent Mulder!”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Will you keep me posted?  Let me know if you find your centenarian killer with the 10 inch fingers?”

 

He tried to detect a hint of malice or amusement in her voice, but she sounded genuine.  “Sure,” he answered, lingering in the doorway for another few moments before taking off. He wondered for a moment if he should say goodbye, but it made him feel like he wouldn’t see her again if he did, so he didn’t.

 

******

 

It was early evening when Mulder arrived back at the crime scene in Baltimore.  The parking garage was nearly deserted, only a few stragglers leaving their offices remained, and of course, the government issue Sedan that told him the planned stakeout was already in effect.  Detective Colton was behind the wheel, reading a magazine, which he shook his head at, but didn’t have time to bother with. He crept through the garage undetected, staying behind pillars and in shadows, making his way towards a lone, grey van parked beside a caged off area of heating and air conditioning equipment.  BALTIMORE MUNICIPAL ANIMAL CONTROL was painted in red on the side of the van.

 

Mulder heard a noise, faint at first, like a tapping from inside the walls of the shaft running across the ceiling of the garage and down into the cage.  He looked up and saw a slight depression in the metal tube above him. Without thinking, he ran towards the Sedan across the lot. To his derision, Detective Colton got out of the car, drawing his weapon as he did so.

 

“Call for backup,” Mulder hissed.  “And put that thing away.” 

 

“What?”

 

“He’s here.”  

 

Mulder didn’t wait to find out if Colton did as he was told, he simply  turned tail and ran back to the cage of equipment where the shafts joined together in an exit.  He drew his gun and pointed it at the grate over the end of the shaft and waited. There was bumping and clanging and then the grate fell forwards and a man slowly emerged, feet first, on hands and knees.

 

“Freeze!” Mulder yelled.  “FBI!”

 

Colton came out of nowhere, flying past Mulder to yank open the cage door.  He whipped out his handcuffs and snapped them on the suspect before pulling him roughly to his feet.

 

“Colton,” Mulder warned.  “Easy.”

 

“You’re under arrest, you sonofabitch,” Colton hissed in the man’s ear, dragging him past Mulder towards his car.  “You have the right to remain silent.”

 

Mulder holstered his weapon as Colton mirandized the suspect and dragged him away.  He had a bad feeling about how Colton was going to handle things as he watched him shove the guy into the back of his Sedan.  He hoped the rookie could keep his ego in check between the parking garage and the precinct, otherwise the case would be blown to pieces.

 

******

 

The suspect’s name was Eugene Victor Tooms according to his driver’s license.  Colton had him in an interrogation room before Mulder even made it to the precinct, but apparently Tooms hadn’t said a word, just stared mutely at the wall in the face of Colton’s raving.  Mulder observed and listened behind the two-way mirror for only a few minutes before he shut the speaker off. He thought about remanding Tooms to federal custody and removing Colton from the investigation, but he knew he didn’t have jurisdiction.

 

Instead, Mulder did a quick background search on Tooms and then sought out the chief on duty and requested a polygraph examiner for interrogation room 2.  He asked for permission to lead the questioning and then interrupted the detective to take over. Colton fumed, but Mulder ignored him.

 

“Mr. Tooms,” Mulder said, taking a seat across from him and smoothing his tie down the front of his chest.  “The woman that hooked you up to this polygraph machine is going to ask you some questions that we just want you to answer yes or no to, that’s all.  Can you do that?”

 

Tooms nodded.

 

“We’re going to need a verbal response from you, Mr. Tooms,” Mulder said.  “A yes or no.”

 

“Yes,” Tooms said.

 

“That’s all you have to do.”  Mulder pushed a pad of paper towards the examiner, a list of questions he’d created while he’d done the background check.

 

They started off casually, verifying his name and residence.  Mulder studied Tooms’ as he answered the questions. His skin and the whites of his eyes had a jaundiced, sickly pallor.  His voice was slow and monotonous. His hands were thin, but looked average. There was something off about him.

 

“Did you kill George Usher?” the examiner asked.

 

“No,” Tooms answered.

 

Mulder glanced at the needle recording the results of the polygraph and watched it jump slightly.

 

“Are you over 100 years old?”

 

“No.”

 

The needle jumped again, spiking even higher than the previous question.

 

“Have you ever been to Powhatan Mill?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Were you there in 1933?”  Mulder asked.

 

“No.”

 

“Are you afraid you will fail this examination?” the examiner asked.

 

“Yes.  I didn’t do anything wrong.”

 

The examiner turned the polygraph machine off and unhooked Tooms from the monitors.  Mulder followed her out of the room where they could review the results. Colton paced behind them.

 

“He passed, in my opinion,” the examiner said.

 

“But, he spiked here, here, and here,” Mulder pointed out.  “His electrodermal and cardiograph responses are off the chart.”

 

“The stupid questions about his age?” Colton interjected.  “My electrodermal and cardiograph responses would probably go off as well.”

 

“Why, were  _ you _ at Powhatan Mill in 1933?” Mulder asked.

 

“I don’t need a polygraph to tell me that Tooms isn’t a 100 year old man.  Besides, while you were in there asking stupid questions, we confirmed with the building that they’d called animal control in to investigate a bad smell.  They found a dead cat in the ventilation ducts on the second floor.”

 

“It doesn’t explain what he was doing there after hours, crawling through air ducts without alerting security.”

 

“Neither does asking him if he was hanging around Powhatan Mill in 1933.  You made me arrest the wrong guy, Spooky, and you made me look like an ass.”

 

“No, Colton, you did that all on your own.”

 

Colton’s pale, freckled face turned an angry shade of red.  He left the room abruptly, slamming the door behind him. Mulder sighed and the examiner looked away.  A few moments later, Tooms was escorted down the hallway by another officer. They were letting him go.  Before he left the precinct, Mulder asked for a copy of Tooms’ arrest record and fingerprints.

 

******

 

In the morning, Mulder got the call that the killer had struck again and he couldn’t say he was surprised.  They’d poked the hornet’s nest and Tooms was anxious for his next two victims. There was little doubt in Mulder’s mind that Tooms was their killer, he just didn’t know how he accomplished it.  The fingerprints weren’t a match, and he had no evidence other than his gut, but his gut was usually right.

 

He walked into the active crime scene less than an hour after he’d gotten the phone call.  Detective Colton was already there and made an attempt to bar Mulder from entering.

 

“Only qualified members of the investigating team inside,” he said.

 

“I have authorized access to this crime scene,” Mulder answered, not in the least concerned about Colton’s sudden display of testosterone.  “A report of you obstructing a federal agent’s investigation might stick out in your personnel file.”

 

As Mulder suspected he would, Colton backed off and stepped aside.  He was all bark and no bite. As he crouched over the bloodstained carpet where the outline of the victim was, he overheard another officer making arrangements to run a check on liver transplant recipients for the next 24 hours to look into the possibility of a black market ring.  Before he stood, he spotted black smudges on the fireplace mantel, which he went to investigate.

 

“He took something,” Mulder said to no one in particular, studying the elongated fingerprint that had been lifted from the front of the mantel and the ring of dust left behind by a missing object.

 

******

 

Instead of showing up at Quantico, Mulder looked up Scully’s number in the FBI directory and called ahead.  He got her voicemail, so he left a message and continued the research he was doing and waited for her to call back.  An hour later, his line rang and it was her, returning his call.

 

“Agent Mulder,” she said.  “How can I help you today?”

 

“Scully, in your medical opinion, if you were to extract a liver for black market purposes, would you literally tear it out of the body?”

 

“Of course not, but I’m sure you already know that.”

 

“I do, I just wanted to hear you say it.”

 

“Have you found your killer yet?”

 

“Actually, I did.”

 

“You found a 100 year old man with ten inch fingers?”

 

“No, but I found one Eugene Victor Tooms, a 30 year old animal control officer hanging around the inside of a ventilation shaft at the crime scene.”

 

“Did he have any livers on him?  Aside from his own, of course.”

 

Mulder chuckled.  He liked this Dana Scully woman.  Maybe a wicked sense of humor was a common trait amongst pathologists.  “That would be too easy,” he answered. “No, but something was definitely off about the guy.  His skin was yellow.”

 

“Yellow skin?  Like jaundice?”

 

“Like jaundice.”

 

“Jaundice occurs when the liver is unable to metabolize the bilirubin in the blood the way it’s supposed to.”

 

“Kind of a weird coincidence, don’t you think?”

 

“Well, you can’t convict on coincidence.”

 

“I know.  And we had to let him go, unfortunately.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Fingerprints weren’t a match.  Not enough evidence. Yet.”

 

“Do you have him under surveillance now?”

 

“I would, but it’s actually not my case, I’m only an assist.  Unfortunately the detective they’ve got as the lead is...well, he’s doing a rather splendid job representing the patriarchy, if you know what I mean.”

 

“What else have you got to go on?”

 

“There was another murder overnight.  Same elongated fingerprint lifted, but it appears as though the liver isn’t the trophy.  He took something else off the mantle.”

 

“What’d he take?”

 

“I don’t know yet, some sort of knick knack I would imagine.  I had a guy at the Baltimore PD check out his address and it turns out it’s a cover, not even a real address.  He hasn’t shown up for work since his arrest either. I’ve been doing other research this morning, making myself seasick running through birth, marriage, and death records for the last century.”

 

“Did you find anything?”

 

“Aside from the fact that he doesn’t seem to have been born, married, or died?  One thing, Eugene Victor Tooms, resident of 66 Exeter Street, apartment 103 from the 1903 census.  Ironically, the 1903 murder took place at the same address, one floor above.”

 

“Your guy’s great grandfather maybe?”

 

“I see where you’re going, and genetics might explain the patterns, but it doesn’t explain the fingerprints.”

 

“You said the fingerprints weren’t a match.”

 

“Yeah, I’m still trying to work that out.”

 

There was a short pause in the conversation and Mulder sat back in his chair and sighed.

 

“You’re afraid you’re running out of time, aren’t you?” Scully asked.

 

“If the pattern holds, he only needs one more victim before he goes back into hiding and the next chance to catch him won’t be until 2023.”

 

“You know what I would do?”

 

“What would you do, Scully?”

 

“I would check out 66 Exeter Street.  And I would see if the investigator in the 1963 case is still with the force, or at the very least, still living.  Not every observation ends up in a report and it sounds like a case like this would stick with someone.”

 

Mulder perked up at the suggestion and sat up straight in his chair.  “Once again, your service has been invaluable. If I find anything…”

 

“Let me give you my cellular.  I’m not always in the office.”

 

They traded cell phone numbers and Mulder hung up, his sense of growing frustration having ebbed since he was on the phone with Scully.  He felt renewed and ready to keep going at the case even with the little he had.

 

******

 

As luck would have it, Mulder was able to find the police officer assigned to the Powhatan Mill murder of 1933.  Through pension records, he was able to find him at an assisted living home in Baltimore. The older man, Frank Briggs, was now wheelchair bound and didn’t have much use of his arms either, but he was still sharp as a tack, and had a clear memory.  All Mulder had to do was flash his badge and the man nodded in understanding.

 

“I’ve been waiting for you for 25 years,” Briggs said.

 

“How’s that?” Mulder asked.

 

“I retired in ‘68 after 45 years on the force.  You’re here about him aren’t you? It’s time for the monster to return.  There’s a box in that trunk over there, would you get it, please?”

 

Mulder glanced behind him at a cedar chest underneath the window.  He opened it up and took out an old shoebox, bound with string. He brought it to Briggs, who nodded at him and Mulder took out a swiss army knife from his pocket to cut the string.  He took the top off the box and set it down on the bed.

 

“That’s all the evidence I collected,” Briggs said.  “Both official and unofficial.”

 

“Unofficial?”

 

“I knew the murders in ‘63 were done by the same person as in ‘33, but no one would listen and by then, they had me at a desk pushing papers.  Wouldn’t let me near the case.”

 

“Is this…”  Mulder held up a small jar filled with a yellowish liquid and what looked like a tiny chunk of meat inside.  

 

“A piece of liver,” Briggs answered.  Mulder had to fight a wave of nausea as he placed the jar back in the box.  “The only piece we found at any crime scenes. And you know about the trophies?  Family members reported small items missing. A hairbrush in the Walters murder. A coffee mug in the Taylor murder.”

 

“Does the name Eugene Victor Tooms ring any bells for you.”

 

“When they wouldn’t bring me aboard in ‘63, I took it upon myself to do some legwork.  That envelope has a few surveillance photos of Tooms. Course, those were 30 years ago.”

 

Mulder opened up a manilla envelope and went through a series of black and white photos of Tooms as he walked down a deserted street.  His face was perfectly clear in one photo and more or less identical to the man Mulder had interrogated the night before. He wished the photos were in color to see if the Tooms of 1963 had the same sickly pallor to his skin.  The last photo was of a squat, brick building about four stories high, on a corner lot.

 

“That last one is of his apartment,” Briggs said.

 

“66 Exeter Street?” Mulder asked.

 

“That’s right.”

 

******

 

Mulder held up the photo of 66 Exeter Street as he stood across the street.  The building itself looked the same, if not worse for wear. Plywood covered most of the windows and graffiti marred the brick.  He easily found entrance at the back of the building via a loose board and turned his flashlight on to walk the dim and narrow hall.

 

The numbers on the apartments were missing, but the outlines of the plates remained.  He looked for 103 and then pushed the broken door open with the tip of his shoe. It was dusty and empty, save for an old mattress propped up against the wall.  The floorboards creaked with every step he took like the wood threatened to break.

 

Mulder turned in a circle within the small studio apartment.  It was a desolate, depressing place, that he couldn’t imagine anyone living in, even if the wallpaper wasn’t peeling and it didn’t smell like mold.  He was about to leave, but just to make a thorough investigation, kicked the mattress over and stepped back in surprise when he revealed a large hole in the wall.

 

It was times like these, Mulder wished he had a partner.  He shined his flashlight into the hole, but couldn’t see much.  He could have called for backup, but with his luck, Detective Colton would probably show up and it wasn’t worth the hassle.  Instead, he took out his phone and dialed Scully.

 

“Scully,” she answered.

 

“Scully, it’s me.”

 

“Agent Mulder?”

 

“I’m at 66 Exeter Street and I’ve found some sort of...I don’t know, there’s a hole in the wall in Tooms’ old apartment.”

 

“Don’t do anything rash.”

 

“Would you do me a favor and stay on the line with me while I see what’s down here?”

 

“Agent Mulder, I don’t think you-”

 

“I’m heading down a ladder.”

 

“What do you see?”

 

“Not much.  Hang on.” He’d tucked his flashlight under his chin so he could descend the ladder and stay on the phone with Scully at the same time and he took it back into his hand to shine it around.  “I think it’s an old coal cellar.”

 

“You need to get out of there and you need to call for backup.”

 

“Looks like someone’s having a yard sale.”

 

“Huh?”

 

Mulder approached a small table in the corner that was cluttered with objects.  A hairbrush, a coffee mug, an ashtray, a crystal vase that judging by the shape of the base, would’ve fit perfectly on the mantle of the last crime scene.  He shone his light in another direction and walked slowly around the room.

 

“I think this is where Tooms lives,” he said.  “The walls...the walls are covered in newspaper.  It’s almost like...he’s nesting.”

 

“Nesting?”

 

“Yeah, it’s...hang on.”  Mulder tucked the phone between his shoulder and jaw and reached into a hole made of rags and newspaper until his hand dipped into something that felt like slime and he pulled it out.  “Jesus, I just touched something gross and it…” He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he brought his hand closer to his face. “It smells like vomit.”

 

“Is it bile?”

 

“Oh my god, is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?”

 

“That can’t be where he lives.”

 

Mulder flicked his wrist to send the sticky goo flying off his hand and then he wiped it on the newspaper covered wall.  “I think this is where he hibernates.”

 

“People don’t hibernate.”

 

“No, listen, what if there’s a genetic mutation that allows for a man to awaken every 30 years?”

 

“Agent Mulder.”

 

“And what if five livers provided the sustenance to allow him to do it?  What if he’s some kind of mutant?”

 

“Mutants are in comic books, Agent Mulder.”

 

“And sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, Scully.”

 

“Would you please get out of that cellar now before I need to call the police?”

 

“He isn’t here anyway.”  Mulder wiped his hand off one more time and then headed for the ladder.  “I need to put a surveillance team on the building.”

 

“Good luck with the patriarchy.”

 

“You too.”

 

******

 

Mulder called AD Skinner after making his way out of 66 Exeter Street and got authority to order round the clock surveillance, at least for the next 48 hours.  He took the first shift and was relieved at midnight by a plainclothes detective. It was after one in the morning when he got home and collapsed on his couch for as much shut eye as he could catch.

 

At 7:30 on the dot, Mulder’s cell phone rang, muffled under the heap of his suit jacket and tie.  He searched the floor with a blind hand, face still pressed to the couch cushions, and managed to find the source of the obnoxious ring before it went to voicemail.

 

“Mulder,” he mumbled.

 

“What the hell do you mean tying up valuable assets of the Baltimore PD on a futile surveillance op?”

 

“Good morning to you too, Detective Colton.”

 

“I just wanted to be the one to break it to you that I called off surveillance a half hour ago.”

 

“You can’t do that.”

 

“You bet your ass I can.  And your assistance is no longer wanted.”

 

“Is this what it takes to climb the ladder, Colton?”

 

“All the way to the top.”

 

“I can’t wait to see you fall on your ass.”

 

“Nice working with you Spooky.  Oh, and if you took my pen, I’d like it back.”

 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“It was a gift from my grandfather.  I’ve taken all my statements with it and I’ll be taking statements with it when I’m the chief and you’re a washed up has-been.”

 

“You’re crazy, Colton.”  Annoyed, Mulder disconnected the call.

 

At this time of morning, Mulder estimated it would take him at least two hours to make it back to 66 Exeter Street.  By then, over three hours would have passed without eyes on the building. He was livid. Colton was an ass and now he was impeding an investigation.  On his way to Baltimore, he would call Skinner and figure out how to remand the case to the feds. And what was the deal with the petty nonsense about stealing the guy’s pen?  Ludicrous.

 

Mulder didn’t bother to shower or shave, he simply threw a new suit on and headed for the door.  His cell phone rang again as he was getting into his car and his initial reaction was to be annoyed again, thinking it was Colton, but he saw Scully’s number on the display and picked up right away.

 

“Mulder,” he said.

 

“Agent Mulder, it’s me.”

 

“It’s not even eight a.m., Scully, and I’m already fighting the patriarchy.  How do you stand it?”

 

“Agent Mulder, listen to me.  Tooms is your guy.”

 

“What?”

 

“I logged into your casefile last night to take another look at what you had.  Something about the fingerprints bothered me and I didn’t put it together before, but when I woke up this morning, it occured to me.  What if Tooms  _ does _ have some sort of genetic anomaly?  Something similar to Marfan’s, but something he has control over.  Like being double-jointed somehow.”

 

“Or, like a human Stretch Armstrong?”

 

“Something like that, yes.  I pulled up the fingerprints from your previous crime scenes and the ones from Tooms’ arrest.  And if you elongate Tooms’ prints, they’re a perfect match.”

 

“Dammit,” Mulder groaned, banging his fist against his steering wheel.

 

“You need to warn whoever’s on duty right now that he has the ability to...to...I don’t know what, but that he should be considered dangerous.  We have no idea what he’s capable of.”

 

“Colton called off the surveillance this morning.”

 

“He did what?”

 

“Called me to gloat about it to.  And to accuse me of stealing his pen.”

 

“His pen?”

 

“The guy’s a maniac.  I’ve got better things to do with my time than steal a pen.  It’s not like I’m…” Tooms, Mulder thought, and then a feeling of dread came over him about a half second later.

 

“Agent Mulder, Colton’s in trouble.”

 

“You read my mind.  Scully, I have to let you go.”

 

“Keep me posted.”

 

Mulder tried calling Colton’s cell phone as he peeled out of his parking spot.  There was no answer. He called Colton’s precinct and told them to send a car over to wherever Colton lived and then he called AD Skinner and appraised him of the situation.  Skinner hung up after assuring Mulder he’d also have an agent sent over from the Baltimore field office ot check in on Colton. Not knowing what else to do, Mulder merged into traffic and headed for 66 Exeter Street.

 

In the hour and a half it took Mulder to get to Tooms’ nest, Mulder received two calls, one from the officer who relieved him from his stakeout and another from a fed that had gone to Colton’s apartment.  No one had any information on the whereabouts of Colton or Tooms.

 

The street was eerily quiet and deserted, not a bird was chirping or a dog barking.  Staying light on his feet, Mulder pulled his weapon out of his holster, held it with both hands, kept it pointed down and away from his body, and sprinted to the back of the building.  He entered as he had the day before, only this time headed straight to apartment 103 and with his gun leading the way.

 

Outside the door of the apartment, Mulder heard a muffled moan and he paused, counted to five to regulate his heart rate, and then kicked the door in.  Tooms was bent over the prone body of detective Colton. He looked up at Mulder, golden eyes bright and blazing.

 

“Move away from detective Colton,” Mulder ordered.

 

Tooms pulled his shoulders in and moved into a crouch.  His long, tapered fingers flexed over Colton’s abdomen and the detective moaned again, blood oozing through his white dress shirt.

 

“I’m warning you, Tooms,” Mulder said.  “You move away now, or I will shoot.”

 

Tooms suddenly lunged forward and hissed.  Mulder fired three times, hitting Tooms twice in the chest and once in the head.  As he went down, the liver thief let out a banshee-like scream and his body curled in on itself.  Keeping his gun trained on Tooms, Mulder moved sideways towards Colton and bent to feel his pulse.  It was weak, but still there. His eyes and his weapon never left Tooms as he called for an ambulance to report an officer down.

 

******

 

Mulder knocked on Scully’s door, ‘shave and a haircut,’ and instead of barging in, waited outside.

 

“Who is it?” she called.

 

“Steven Spielberg,” he answered.

 

“Come in.”

 

He flashed a smile as he entered her office and she lifted her brows as she gave him a once-over from her desk.  He glanced down at his jeans and maroon t-shirt, knowing he was underdressed.

 

“I’m on mandatory leave,” he explained.  “Two weeks for firing my weapon.”

 

“You could’ve just called for the results, you didn’t have to come all the way down.”

 

He shrugged.  He could tell her he was bored out of his mind at home alone with his fish, but that would only be half the truth.  What really brought him to her office was that he wanted to see her again, not just hear her voice. He sat down across from her in the single chair on the other side of her desk.  She was wearing glasses and her hair was pulled back into a clip.

 

“Well, you’re in luck because I finished the autopsy on Tooms about an hour ago,” she said.  “The preliminary medical exam revealed quite abnormal development in the muscular and skeletal systems.”

 

“Marfan’s?”

 

“I don’t really know, if I’m being completely honest.  It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve taken samples to order further genetic testing.”

 

“You’ll let me know if you find something?”

 

“ _ If _ I find something?  There’s always something to be found.”

 

“In my experience, not everything can be explained.”

 

“Of course it can.  The answers are there, you just need to know where to look.”

 

“Well...I’m looking at you.”

 

Scully’s lips pursed into a small smile and she dropped her eyes for a moment.  “Then, I’ll try to do my best, Agent Mulder.”

 

“You can just call me Mulder.  The Agent is so formal.”

 

“You could call me Dana.”

 

“I like Scully.”

 

She blinked at him a few times.  There was tension in the room and he knew she must feel it too.  He was flirting with her somewhat shamelessly. He hadn’t intended to, but it was suddenly hard not to.  She wasn’t his really his type. He preferred brunettes over redheads or even blondes. He liked a tall woman and Scully had to be at least a foot shorter than him.  But, she was whip smart, had a quick wit, and she was beautiful in her own way with her pale skin, dusting of freckles across her patrician nose, and her intensely blue eyes.

 

“How is Detective Colton faring?” she asked, breaking the tension and sudden silence that had descended like a cloud over the room.

 

“He’ll live,” Mulder answered.  “Needed minor surgery. They’re more worried about possible infection than anything else.”

 

“Did he corroborate your report at least?”

 

“For the most part.  He admitted to calling off the surveillance, or at least, telling me he had.  In reality he took it over himself and then got bored and went exploring. Tooms knocked him out after he entered the apartment, which must not have been too long before I got there.  He doesn’t remember much after that, but said he vaguely heard me identifying myself and ordering Tooms to back off.”

 

“Hopefully he’s learned his lesson.”

 

“Time will tell.”

 

Another silence fell, and that time, it was Mulder that became uncomfortable.  He gripped the arms of his chair and stood up before shoving his hands in his pockets.

 

“I’ll get out of your hair,” he said.

 

“Feel free to call if you run across anything interesting in the future.”

 

“I will.”  He paused on the verge of asking her out, but something held him back.  “Later, Scully.”

 

“Until next time, Mulder.”

 

*****


	2. Chapter 2

It was almost two months before another case would bring Scully back into Mulder’s life.  He wasn’t disappointed not to have a body to bring to her for her consideration, but he was disappointed that he couldn’t think up a reasonable excuse to drop in on her again.  

 

Detective Thomas Thompson of the Atlantic City PD and Mulder had rubbed shoulders before back in Mulder’s Golden Boy days.  When the body of a homeless man was found by a family on a weekend camping trip, he thought nothing of it, until he saw the body.  That’s when he called his contact at the FBI and in turn, Mulder hit 3 on his speed dial. She picked up on the fourth ring.

 

“Dana Scully.”

 

“How’s the patriarchy looking today, Scully?”

 

“Cloudy with a chance of patronizing.”

 

“Sorry to hear that.”

 

“It’s nice to hear from you again.”

 

“Is it?”  Mulder couldn’t help but smile a little at the thought that she was pleased he had called.

 

“Yes, I could use something interesting.  Tell me you have something interesting up your sleeve.”

 

He felt only a smidge of disappointment that she was all business.  “Well, it’s too big to fit up my sleeve,” he said. “But how’s a body in the woods outside of Atlantic City missing a right arm and shoulder?”

 

“That’s it?”

 

“Oh, dismemberment too prosaic for you?  I mean I know what you’re thinking, Scully.”

 

“Do you?”

 

“Yeah, AC, not an uncommon place to lose a limb, what with the mob and everything.”

 

“Sure, the mob.  That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

 

“What if I told you it appears as though the arm was eaten off by a human?”

 

“That’s one way to get to the liver.”

 

“No livers were harmed in the maiming of John Doe.”

 

“Have the body sent to Quantico.”

 

“UPS or FedEx?”

 

“I’ll let you know what I find.”

 

Mulder hung up the phone and twirled around in his desk chair.  He would never describe his job as fun, but talking to Scully, sometimes she made it feel that way.

 

******

 

The name of the man who called in to report the body in the woods was a park ranger named Peter Boulay.  Mulder looked up the number to the New Jersey Parks Department and after being transferred several times, finally got in touch with the ranger.

 

“Could you describe the scene for me?” Mulder asked.

 

“Well, it was lying face down in some rocks,” Boulay answered.  “32 years in the Parks Department, I tell you I’ve come across some weird stuff, but nothing like this”

 

“The victim was a homeless man.  You get many wandering around out there?”

 

“On occasion, but most of them are scared to come out here.”

 

“Why would they be scared?”

 

“I don’t know, the devil.”

 

“The devil?

 

“Uh huh.  Jersey Devil.”

 

“Isn’t that just a myth, Mr. Boulay?”

 

“Depends on who you talk to.”

 

“What do you think?”

 

“Well like I said, 32 years, I see a lot of weird stuff.  Like, one time, a little over four years ago, I saw what I thought was a large man come out of a copse of birch trees, not a stitch of clothing on him.  He was about 60 yards away and he starts sniffing the air, you know like a dog. And then, he looks straight at me and I swear he smelled me because he took off into the woods so fast, you'd swear it wasn't human.”

 

“And you never saw him again?”

 

“No, but I feel him.  And I found things, some scat half buried like a cat's only more human. Found a half eaten rabbit with what looked like a human cuspid tooth in it.  And some deer bones, looked like they'd been sharpened into tools.”

 

“You think that might be responsible for the body you found?”

 

Boulay chuckled nervously.  “Well, Mr. Mulder, I got a pension coming up in a few years, you know?  Say the wrong thing and...well, you know?”

 

“I get it.”

 

“I’ll just tell you this, I never go out there without my weapon.  Never.”

 

“How far is town from the woods?”

 

“Mile and a half, about.”

 

“Any good motels out that way?”

 

“Galaxy Gateway is pretty decent.”

 

“Mr. Boulay, I’m going to give you my cell phone number.  If you think of anything else, I want you to call me.”

 

“Alright then.”

 

******

 

The morgue at Quantico was one of Mulder’s least favorite places.  He had to deal with bodies at crime scenes and in photos, but somehow, it was different when a corpse was laid out on a metal table, ready to be unzipped and taken apart.  His stomach always rolled a little in the first few moments.

 

He found Scully in front of the wall of cold storage lockers, thankfully closing a door and not opening it.  She had a bloodstained smock on and rubber gloves. Plastic glasses were pushed up over her head and her hair was in a ponytail.  He set his jaw and tried not to think about the blood or the nearness of the bodies just behind the wall.

 

“Am I early or late?” he asked.

 

“Depends on what you’re interested in.”  She peeled her gloves off and scanned his face.  “Should I go get the smelling salts? You’re looking a little pale, Agent Mulder.”

 

“It’s the fluorescents.  They do nothing for my color.”

 

“Uh huh.”  She motioned for him to follow her as she moved about the room, shedding her smock and tossing it into a biohazard bin along with her gloves.

 

“You done slicing and dicing John Doe?”

 

“Not a John Doe any longer.  He was identified as one Roger Crockett.  But, yes, I finished his autopsy about ten minutes ago.”

 

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

 

She motioned again and he held a swinging metal door open for her as they went into a small office that was as pristine and cold as the interior of the morgue.  She booted up a computer and entered a password and then stepped to the side to share the monitor with him. She opened up a series of post-mortem photos and stopped at one, pointing at the screen.

 

“There are teeth marks just below the clavicle,” she said, running her finger along the exposed bone in the photo.  “And they are definitely human.”

 

“Was he alive when it happened?”

 

“Hard to tell.  There’s a skull fracture, but no sign of a struggle.  His blood alcohol content was up. Probably never knew what hit him.”

 

“Any ideas about who we’d be looking for in a suspect?”

 

“Judging by the size of the bite mark, I’d say a large adult male.”

 

“Interesting.”

 

“So, what do you have?”

 

Mulder stepped back from the computer table and leaned against the wall.  “You ever heard of the Jersey Devil?”

 

“No, I haven’t.”  She shook her head.

 

“1947, a family watches as dad is dragged off into the woods.  Cops find dad with a few appendages gnawed off. Later, they corner a large naked man in the woods and gun him down. The autopsy shows human flesh and bones in the man's large intestine.  A  _ beast _ man.”

 

Scully put her hand on her hip as Mulder was relaying his story, her other braced on the computer table, and as he finished, she smiled a little and bowed her head.  She looked amused and shy. A tendril of hair fell from behind her ear and he wanted to push it back.

 

“What?” he asked.

 

“Nothing,” she answered, lifting her head, but not meeting his eyes.  Her smile had only faded a little. “You have the autopsy report? From 1947?”

 

“No, but I have a statement from the attending pathologist.”

 

“It’s a folktale, Mulder.  There are variations of that story around campfires across the country, the world probably.  Just a spooky story meant to scare children.”

 

“Do you think I’m spooky?”

 

“That’s not what...”  Scully trailed off and looked down again.  He knew in that moment that she knew his nickname and now they were both embarrassed.

 

On impulse, Mulder hooked his finger into the chain of her necklace where it dangled low near her abdomen.  He fingered the tiny gold cross charm that hung from it for a few moments and then let it fall back against her blouse.  She watched his hand and then raised her eyes to his. 

 

He felt the crackle of tension again as they stared at each other and then he pushed away from the wall.  “I’ve been around my share of campfire tales,” he said. “Only I believed them. And you can’t forget the fact that we have a cannibalized body on our hands now.  Someone or  _ something _ is hungry.”

 

“Maybe next time he should try one of the all you can eat buffets on the boardwalk instead or taking in a floor show.  That’ll make anyone lose their appetite.”

 

Mulder laughed.  Scully looked at her watch and then cringed.

 

“I don’t want to rush you out,” she said.  “But, I have somewhere I need to be.”

 

“Oh?” Mulder said, looking at his watch as well.  It was a little after four. He had a sinking feeling.  “A date?”

 

“My Godson’s sixth birthday party.”

 

“Oh.”  He almost breathed a sigh of relief.

 

“And I have no idea what to get him.  I may end up running into the toy store and buying the first thing I see.”

 

“Light sabers.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“The force is strong with six year old boys.  Get him a pair of light sabers, you’ll be a hit.”

 

“Is that what you wanted when you were a six year old boy?”

 

“When the Star Wars movies came out, I was at a time in my life that I was more interested in Princess Leia’s gold bikini.”

 

Scully chuckled as she shut down the computer.  “And now?”

 

“I wouldn’t turn down a light saber  _ or _ a gold bikini.”

 

“Good luck with your Jersey Devil, Mulder.”

 

“Good luck with the six year olds.”

 

******

 

In the four hour drive to Atlantic City, Mulder spent about as much time pondering the case as he did his gut reaction to the thought that Scully might have had a date.  He should have asked her out two months ago. The worst she could do is turn him down, but then he’d be embarrassed and would probably never see her again. He wanted too much to see her again, both professionally and personally, to risk that happening.

 

Mulder sighed.  He was starting to feel brooding and melancholy and he hated feeling that way.  It was just after nine p.m. and he’d checked into a small, dingy motel off the strip and on the outskirts of Atlantic City.  His only plan was to walk around and scope out the cardboard cities Detective Thompson had given him directions to, but he needed to clear his head first, so he picked up his motel phone and dialed out to Rhode Island.  His sister answered sounding slightly out of breath.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Samantha, it’s me.”

 

“Oh, hey Fox.  Hold on a second.”

 

“Sure.”  He looked at his watch as he waited for Samantha to come back to the phone.  About a minute later she picked up again.

 

“Sorry, Kyle’s going through  a phase of getting out of bed every twenty minutes and we have to keep bringing him back.”

 

“I hope I didn’t wake him.”

 

“No, no.  What’s up?  Where are you calling from?”

 

“Atlantic City.”

 

“Work or pleasure?”

 

“Work, of course.”

 

“Are you coming to Mom’s for Thanksgiving?

 

“Depends on what comes across my desk.  Will Dad be there?”

 

“Fox.”

 

Mulder could hear the admonishment in Samantha’s voice and even though she wasn’t there with him, he could see the look of it on her face as well.

 

“Sam, all I’ll say is that they got divorced for a reason.  He doesn’t need to come around ruining the holidays and she doesn’t need to invite it.”

 

“She just wants everyone to be together, you know that.”

 

“She wants the  _ appearance _ of it.  There’s a difference.”

 

“Okay, cease fire.  I’m sure you didn’t call to talk about family drama.”

 

“I want your opinion on something.”

 

“You met someone?”

 

“I didn’t say that.”

 

“Shut up, you met someone!”

 

Mulder sighed into the phone and bumped his skull back on the headboard of the bed.  “Now, don’t get all you about it.”

 

“What’s she like?”

 

“She’s a pathologist.”

 

“Fox, that tells me nothing.  Actually, that makes me think she lives in a dungeon somewhere surrounded by dead bodies.  Give me actual information.”

 

“She’s way more patient than you.”

 

“Bite me.”

 

“Okay, I actually met her a couple months ago.  We work together. Sort of. Well, not really, but we’re colleagues and I needed her opinion on a case.”

 

“And?”

 

“And she’s highly intelligent.”

 

“Naturally.”

 

“She has a wicked sense of humor.”

 

“I like her already.”

 

“I kind of accidentally flirted with her a little.”

 

“That’s a load of crap.  You don’t accidentally do anything.”

 

“Okay, I flirted with her on purpose a little.  She seemed receptive, but closed off at the same time.”

 

“Why don’t you just ask her on a date?”

 

“I thought about it, but I don’t want to tarnish anything between us.  I think I’m going to need her too much in a professional capacity. And that just seems to make me like her even more.”

 

“Your work is difficult, Fox.  I know you and I know what some of the things you work on does to you.”

 

“Which is why I feel like I don’t want to do anything about it.”

 

“Why not ask her to coffee?  Not like a date, but, and I know this is a difficult concept for you to wrap your male brain around, but like a friend?  It doesn’t have to be all sex or all work.”

 

“Ugh, don’t say sex.  You’re my sister.”

 

“Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.  Good god, you can take the boy out of New England, but you can’t take the New England out of the boy.”

 

“You are the same pest now as you were at eight.  Don’t make me hang up on you.”

 

“Don’t go through life alone just because you’re afraid of ending up like Mom and Dad.”

 

“That’s not what I’m doing.  I’ve dated. I’ve had girlfriends.”

 

“One girlfriend.  One  _ serious _ girlfriend.  And I can’t even say her name.”

 

“You didn’t like Diana, I know.”

 

“Ugh, Fox, please.  The shiksa was a klafte, as Bubbe would say.”

 

“It was years ago.  You never have to see her again, I promise.”

 

“Kinehora.”

 

“I should go, I’m on the clock.”

 

“Keep me updated on your-what’s her name?”

 

“Scully.”

 

“What kind of name is Scully?”

 

“Her last name.  Hey, has Kyle ever seen Star Wars?”

 

“He’s three, Fox, he’s still slightly afraid of Barney.  No, he hasn’t seen Star Wars.”

 

“Okay, nevermind.”

 

“Go catch some bad guys, big brother.  Love you.”

 

“Love you too, pest.  Give Kyle a kiss for me.”

 

“Give him one yourself at Thanksgiving.”

 

“Sam.”

 

“Just think about it.”

 

******

 

Sometimes a few moments of respite or a conversation with his sister could clear Mulder’s head to a point where he could regroup and focus.  He pushed his thoughts of Scully aside and any feelings he might have on a Thanksgiving family gettogether aside, and went out into the cool night to talk to the locals.  The victim in his case was a homeless man, so it made sense to him to start amongst the man’s friends and fellow street dwellers.

 

The shanty town in a thick stretch of alley between an abandoned factory and crumbling brick office was rife with cliches.  Makeshift shelters of cardboard boxes lined the walls and every few feet was a circle of rag-clad men warming their hands by a fire in a metal drum.  Trash and rats were plentiful. The smell of rotten fruit and body odor was pungent.

 

“Does anyone here know Roger Crockett?” Mulder asked as he passed by.  He got stared at or ignored in reply. “Roger Crockett? He was murdered two days ago.”

 

An old woman with frizzy grey hair pushed a wobbling shopping cart full of cans past him.  The front right wheel was missing. She sneered a toothless grin at him.

 

“Ma’am?” he asked.  “Do you know Roger Crockett?”

 

The woman answered with an explicit and gross proposition and then choked on her own laughter as she continued pushing her cart.  Mulder tried not to flinch or show any kind of shock or insult. A dirty, skinny guy with dark, curly hair and a beard that was lying on a slice of cardboard pushed himself up and kept himself steady against the brick wall as he motioned for Mulder to come closer.

 

“What do you want to know about Roger?” the man asked.

 

“Are you aware he was murdered?” Mulder asked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Any ideas about who might have done it?”

 

“You a cop, man?”

 

“I’m FBI.”

 

“I’ll show you somethin’, but I need cash.”

 

Mulder took a glance around the alley as he took out his wallet.  He had 32 dollars in cash that he gave to the man who quickly shoved it into his pants pocket and then motioned for Mulder to follow him into an empty doorway.  Just inside the doorway was a black trash bag that the man rummaged around in and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He gave it to Mulder who unfolded it. It was a sketch of what looked to be a shaggy-haired naked man, non-descript, without features or genitalia.

 

“What am I looking at?” Mulder asked.

 

“I seen it.”

 

“It?”

 

“Scared the hell out of me.”  The man was wide-eyed, even talking about the sketch was clearly making him agitated.

 

“What do you think it is?”

 

“I dunno.  A monster.”

 

“Has anyone else seen it?”

 

“Everybody ‘round here’s seen it.  We’re all freaked, man.”

 

“Have you been to the police?”

 

“You think they don’t know?”

 

Mulder looked up and down the alley and then folded the sketch and put it in his pocket.  “Where are you sleeping tonight?”

 

“You’re kinda standing on my bed.”

 

Mulder looked down at the cardboard under his feet.  He pulled the motel key out of his pocket and handed it to the man.  “You know the Galaxy Gateway?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Room 106.  Go ahead.”

 

The man blinked and looked at the key in his hand and then at Mulder.  “They got HBO?”

 

“Go find out.”

 

******

 

By four in the morning, Mulder was regretting his split second decision to hand over his room key to the homeless man.  He huddled on the slab of cardboard in a near fetal position, the thin blanket he’d found not nearly enough covering to keep him from shivering in the cold.  The alley had grown hushed at some point after midnight, but the occasional cough or broken bottle would startle him from his makeshift bed and set his heart racing.

 

A rustling noise from somewhere beyond caused him to turn over and he scanned the dark alley for signs of movement, but saw nothing.  He was about to curl up again, but he spotted a figure hunched down at the end of the alley rummaging through a pile of trash. Suddenly, the figure stopped and turned its face up, sniffing the air like a hound, and then leapt up and scaled a chain-link fence and disappeared.

 

In a flash, Mulder had thrown the blanket off and ran towards the fence, climbing as quick as he could until he dropped down to the other side.  He searched the dark, side to side, and then turned and spotted the figure running along the catwalk of the old factory up to the roof.

 

“Dammit,” Mulder muttered.  He was about to climb the fence back to the other side, when he was suddenly blinded by a twin pair of headlights and he raised his arm to block the glare.

 

The car stopped next to Mulder and the tell-tale blue and red lights turned on top signifying the police.  An officer got out and shined a flashlight in Mulder’s face.

 

“Can I see some ID, Sir?” the officer asked.

 

“Fox Mulder, FBI,” Mulder answered, reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out his badge.  “There’s a man on that roof.”

 

“I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the station.  FBI or not, we can’t have people prowling around here at night.  This is restricted property.”

 

“Call Detective Thompson.  He knows who I am.”

 

“I’ll do that.  At the station.”

 

******

 

Mulder huffed a sigh for at least the 586th time that morning as he paced an interrogation room of the Atlantic City police station.  He wasn’t under arrest, he wasn’t being held for questioning, they simply installed him in the room to wait for Detective Thompson. Finally, the detective arrived, looking like he’d been yanked out of bed, in a rumpled suit, holding two styrofoam cups of coffee.  His light brown hair looked a little thinner than when Mulder had last seen him and he was a little thicker around the middle as well.

 

“Tommy,” Mulder said, taking the proffered cup of coffee in lieu of shaking his old friend’s hand.  They both sat down at the table and the detective yawned.

 

“What’re you doin’ up here, Mulder?”

 

“You asked for me.”

 

“Yeah, I wanted your opinion.  The chief wants my ass now for thinkin’ I brought in the Feds.  He wants to go to the D.A.’s office and file a report for obstructing an investigation and misconduct.”

 

“What?”

 

“Don’t worry about it.”  Tommy waved and took a sip of his coffee.  “He’s a blowhard. But, you didn’t have to come all this way.”

 

“If he goes to the D.A., I’ll file my own report for withholding evidence.”

 

“Come again?”

 

“Statements given to your boys about something stalking the backstreets of AC.”

 

“Bull.”

 

“Why else would there be patrols out in the alleys?”

 

“We got an unidentified Hannibal the cannibal walkin’ around somewhere and innocent citizens to protect.”

 

“I’ve seen it.”

 

“Seen what?”

 

Mulder took the sketch out of his pocket and unfolded it before he passed it across the table to the detective.  He took a tentative taste of his coffee which tasted too bitter for him so he put it down and watched Tommy study the paper.

 

“You’ve been spending too much time in supermarket checkout lines,” Tommy said, sliding the sketch back across the table to Mulder.

 

“Who’s going to accept responsibility when you lose your first tourist?  The chief?”

 

“And that’s exactly why we got men out on the streets keeping things safe.”

 

“I don’t know, Tommy, seems to me the priorities might be to keep the dice rolling and the tour buses full.  If you can’t fill the casinos, the whole town disappears like a quarter down a slot.”

 

“We got that to think about too.”

 

“Okay, then.  You want your streets safe and I want to catch this thing and bring it in.”

 

“ _ It _ , Mulder?”

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“Keep your head down.  Keep out of the way of the boys in blue.  I can’t give you a pass to be here. I should be throwin’ your ass outta the state.”

 

“You won’t even know I’m here.”

 

******

 

Detective Thomas gave Mulder a ride back to his motel.  He knocked tentatively on the door and when there was no answer, gave the handle a try.  The door was open and though the room looked untouched, the bed was sloppily made and wet towels were draped over the shower curtain rod.  A note was scratched onto the complimentary pad of paper next to the lamp that simply read ‘Thanks, man.’

 

Mulder kicked off his shoes, pulled his jacket off, undid his belt and tie, and hit the pillows.  He slept away the morning and woke up to the ringing of his cell phone just before noon with a crick in his neck.  He rolled over, rubbed his eyes, and then reached for the phone.

 

“Mulder,” he answered, voice husky with sleep.

 

“Mulder, it’s me.”

 

“Hey, Scully.”  He yawned.

 

“Did I wake you?”

 

“I was up all night, but it was worth it.  I saw it, Scully. I saw the Jersey Devil.”

 

“Are all your body parts intact?”

 

“It was dark, but I could still see it.  It moved like a cat, quick and graceful. Over a fence in an alley and onto a roof.  There’s no way a human could’ve done something like that so fast.”

 

“I believe bobcats are the only indigenous big cats in New Jersey.”

 

“It wasn’t a literal cat.  It just moved like one. And the way it sniffed the air too like it could smell danger.  I’m guessing it came out of the woods searching for food.”

 

“Then you’re lucky it didn’t make you a midnight snack.”

 

“I don’t know, Scully, it was rifling through garbage.  I’m now wondering why, if it is a man-eater, why didn’t it go after me?”

 

“Mulder, listen to yourself.  You’re ascribing it a motive and an alibi.  Chewing off an arm isn’t exactly a defensive posture.”

 

“Do you believe I saw something?”

 

“Why wouldn’t I have reason to believe you saw something?  But, you said it yourself, it was dark.”

 

“I know what I saw,” he said, stubbornly.

 

There was a short pause on Scully’s end and he rubbed the bridge of his nose, chagrined.  He knew he should apologize for being snappy, but she started talking again and it left his mind.

 

“What’s gonna happen when this gets back to the bureau, Mulder?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“That you’re tracking a myth.  What do you think people will say?”

 

“I appreciate your concern for my reputation, but I don’t really care what people say.”  He paused, because he realized he did care what one person thought. “ _Do_ _you_ think I’m Spooky, Scully?”

 

“No I don’t, Mulder.”

 

“Then, that’s all that matters.”

 

In the pause that followed, Mulder sat up in bed and rolled his stiff neck.

 

“I called to give you a name,” Scully said. 

 

“A name?”

 

“Yes, Dr. Diamond.  He’s a professor of Anthropology at the University of Maryland.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Is it supposed to mean something to me?”

 

“No, but he’s willing to meet with you if you’d like.  I can take you to him.”

 

“You want to take me to the University of Maryland?”

 

“It’s my alma mater.  I know it like the back of my hand.”

 

“Okay, Scully.  Take me to the home of the Terrapins.”  Mulder hung up and then dialed his sister ten seconds later.  “If a woman invites you to her alma mater, is that a date?”

 

“I don’t know, Fox, if a five year old keeps scratching his head all morning and I take him to the nurse, and she says he has lice, and then you have to spend the next hour calling all the parents of your kindergarteners to alert them to a possible lice infestation, would you say your sister’s having a good morning, or a bad morning?”

 

“I’ll call you back.”

 

******

 

At precisely four p.m., Mulder met Scully at the quad of UMD.  She wore a long beige trench coat over a maroon pantsuit. He tried to imagine her as an undergrad, walking the campus, but couldn’t.  She led him to one of the many Colonial buildings nestled amongst the colorful maple and oak trees; Woods Hall, ironically.

 

Dr. Diamond shook Mulder’s hand and gave Scully a warm hug.  He was squat and rotund with frizzy white hair and thick, round glasses.  He wore a sweater vest and wool slacks. His office was cluttered with fossils and skulls and papers and books.  Coffee simmered on a hot plate precariously resting on a stack of folders. He offered Mulder and Scully a cup. Scully declined, but Mulder took him up on the offer.  It was much better than the swill the ACPD had on hand.

 

“It’s Sumatran,” Dr. Diamond said, when Mulder asked what it was.  “Kopi Luwak. The coffee cherries are digested by the civet cat, fermenting as they pass through the intestine.  The feces is then collected and processed for brewing.”

 

Mulder discretely lowered his coffee cup and Scully, leaning against one of the professor’s worktable, muffled a chuckle behind her hand.  Dr. Diamond took a large gulp of the coffee and sighed as though refreshed. He grinned and then elbowed Mulder in the rib.

 

“I’m just pulling your leg, Agent Mulder.  It’s only Folger’s.”

 

“You got me.”

 

“Don’t feel bad.  Dana was the only TA in 20 years not to fall for the joke.  She told me I’d never be able to afford Kopi Luwak on a teacher’s salary, and she was right.”

 

“It’s real?”

 

“Oh, very much so, very much so.  Now, you’re here to talk about the Jersey Devil?”

 

“You know it?”

 

“Sure, sure.  Just about every culture has one.  Yetis, sasquatch, the Mongolian almas, d’sonoqua.”

 

“Why is that?  If it doesn’t exist.”

 

“It's a kind of universal wild man myth.  A symbolic fear of our dual natures as humans, as creators of life and destroyers of it.”

 

“Emphasis on myth,” Scully added.

 

Mulder looked up at her.  Behind where she leaned, with her arms crossed, was a map of some sort.  He studied it for a few moments, but couldn’t make it out. 

 

“What’s that chart there?” Mulder asked.  Scully looked over her shoulder to where Mulder’s gaze was directed.

 

“It shows the historic entry of man onto each continent and the effect it had on other animal species, which as you see has been disastrous,” Dr. Diamond said.

 

“Why?”

 

“Well, we humans have retained hereditary traits through evolution that have proven to be extremely destructive.  We tend to be tribal and aggressively territorial, oriented by selfish sexual and reproductive drives that make cooperation beyond the family-tribe extremely hard for us.”

 

“So, we kill other species in order to survive.”

 

“Humans are top carnivores,” Scully said.  “We sit at the top of the food chain and we reduce other species' chance of survival.”

 

“Nice to know Dana left here with more than a degree.”  Dr. Diamond smiled.

 

“But, what if something entered the food chain above us?” Mulder asked.

 

“It won't happen.  Our intelligence virtually insures us, barring the introduction of some alien life-form, we will live out our days as rulers of the world.”

 

“But, what if through some fluke of nature, a human was born, who reverted to its most animal instincts, a kind of carnivorous neanderthal.  Wouldn't he occupy a space above us on the food chain?”

 

“Oh sure, all he'd have to do is wait outside any fast-food restaurant and eat us on the way in.”

 

Mulder could tell the professor was amused by him, but he felt a growing sense of understanding of the creature in the Jersey woods and though his questions sounded outlandish, he was absolutely sincere.

 

“But haven’t there been cases where someone’s been raised in the wilderness by animals who have no language and hunt like predators?”

 

“Several, but cannibalism is rare, even among the lower mammals.”

 

“What if a lifeform was faced with extinction?  Wouldn’t they do anything?”

 

The professor contemplated for a bit and sipped his coffee.  “Well, maybe in the jungles of New Guinea or…” He paused and shook his head.  “It's just highly unlikely that what you're suggesting could've survived civilization, a revolution, out in the woods of New Jersey.”

 

“Highly unlikely, but not outside the realm of extreme possibility.”

 

Dr. Diamond huffed into his coffee and nodded.  “It would be an incredible discovery.”

 

Mulder looked at Scully.  She sighed and turned back to the strange chart behind her.  She’d obviously brought him out to the college to change his mind, not reinforce his belief, and certainly not to put a kernel of interest into her old professor.  The phone in his pocket rang and he excused himself and walked closer to the door to answer it.

 

“Mulder,” he answered.

 

“Mr. Mulder, this is Peter Boulay of the Parks Department.”

 

“Yes, hi.”

 

“Hi, yeah, uh, I found another body today, looks like it’s been dead six to eight months at least.  Long-haired male, missing the same tooth I found in that rabbit awhile back. Could be the devil, maybe.”

 

“Where’s the body now, Mr. Boulay?”

 

“I turned it over to the coroner’s office.”

 

“You sure it was male?”

 

“Well, it had all the plumbing.”

 

“Okay, I’m back in Maryland right now, but I’ll be headed out your way soon.  I’ll call you from the road.”

 

“Alright then.”

 

Mulder hung up the phone and looked at both Scully and the professor, talking quietly amongst each other.  He tugged lightly at his tie.

 

“I just had an amazing thought,” he said.  “What if it’s not a beast  _ man _ we’re looking for at all?”

 

“Beast _ woman _ ?” Scully asked.

 

“Either of you up for a roadtrip to The Garden State?”

 

******

 

The Atlantic City coroner’s office was cramped.  The coroner shook her head in confusion when the trio, accompanied by Ranger Boulay, walked through the door.

 

“Nobody logged a body onto the chart,” she told Boulay.  “I sure haven’t seen one come through.”

 

“I don’t understand, Glenna,” Boulay said.  “What would they have done with it?”

 

Mulder pulled Scully aside while the coroner and the park ranger argued about the missing body.  “They’re going to sweep all this under the rug,” he told her.

 

“Why?”

 

“Any kind of publicity on this and the craps tables will empty out as fast as they fill up.  Word gets out there’s something on the loose, forget it.”

 

“You said it was female.”

 

“The body we found was male.  I said there’s a 50/50 chance we’re looking for its mate.  The only way we’re going to find out now is if we do it ourselves.”

 

“You want us to go out and catch it?”  Scully asked, her voice rising slightly and brows lifting.

 

“What are the odds on catching it alive?” Dr. Diamond interjected.  He’d been listening to their conversation the whole time and Mulder knew he was on board.

 

“Scully, you in?” Mulder asked.

 

“Fine.”

 

******

 

Mulder used a pair of wire cutters that Boulay handed him to cut through the the chain-link fence he’d chased the devil up the night before.  The ranger stood lookout, a rifle in his hands. Scully crouched next to Mulder, pushing the fence back as he cut.

 

“If it is a primate,” Dr. Diamond said, his voice almost a whisper as he stood over Mulder’s right shoulder.  “It would have a natural fear of heights. It would also want to stay close to its food source.”

 

“This thing has no fear of heights,” Mulder answered and then pocketed the wire cutters.  He pushed the fencing aside and ducked through, holding it back so Dr. Diamond, Scully, and finally, Boulay, could follow.

 

“What do we do?” Boulay asked.

 

“We stay together,” Mulder answered.  “Start with the lower floors. How much time will that dart give us?”

 

Boulay lifted the rifle a little. “It’ll put down a 500 pound bear for an hour, if I hit it.”

 

“Good enough.  Follow me.”

 

The foursome hustled quietly through the open door of the old factory.  There was glass on the floors from the windows having been smashed out. Dust and dirt covered old equipment that hadn’t been destroyed or stolen.  They spread out a little and Mulder shined his flashlight into dark corners. Scully inspected a row of rusted lockers while Dr. Diamond crouched over a pile of rags.  Boulay kept his head and eyes up towards the catwalks crisscrossing the high ceiling.

 

“There’s something here,” Dr. Diamond called, and the group converged to where he was bent over.  “It’s blood. She could be bringing her victims here.”

 

“Or, she could be injured,” Mulder said.

 

Scully turned away and went back past the lockers to a flight of stairs.  Mulder followed her up to the next floor and they crept along a catwalk to the opposite side.  

 

“How close do you think she is to you or me, Scully?” Mulder asked from behind.  “Does she feel emotion? Or are her days just spent looking for food?”

 

“Maybe she spends them shopping.”

 

“Eight million years out of Africa, I don’t think we’re all that different.”

 

“Mulder, we’ve put men into space.  We’ve built computers that work faster than the human mind.”

 

“While we overpopulate the world and create new technologies to kill each other with.  Maybe we're just beasts with big brains.”

 

Scully snorted.  “You should’ve been at my godson’s birthday party.  Eight six-year olds. Talk about primitive behavior.”

 

“I meant to ask you how it went.”

 

“The light sabers were a bit hit.  Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome.”

 

A burst of noise sounded from below, followed by a cacophony of voices.  Mulder switched off his flashlight and pulled Scully back into the shadows of the catwalk.  He took a chance and peered over the rail and saw Detective Thompson talking to Dr. Diamond.

 

“His name is Mulder,” Thompson said.  “He’s a federal agent. You don’t know him?”

 

“No,” Dr. Diamond said.

 

“Never heard of him?”

 

“Never.”

 

Scully took a step closer to Mulder and he turned to put his finger over his lips.  She nodded and they both peered cautiously over the railing.

 

“Then what are you doing here?” Thompson asked.

 

“I’m a professor of Anthropology.”

 

“I know he’s somewhere and I’m gonna find him.”  Thompson held his radio up to his mouth and pressed the button on the side.  “I want two of you to search the perimeter and two of you to check upstairs.”

 

“Come on,” Mulder whispered, taking Scully’s hand to guide her across the catwalk to a door.  

 

“There’s nowhere to go but up,” Scully told him and he nodded.

 

Quietly, they worked their way up towards the top level of the factory.  When they reached the end, there were a series of open doors, like small offices, all along the wall.

 

“I’ll go right, you go left,” Scully said.

 

“You sure?” Mulder asked.  He suddenly had qualms about having brought her out to New Jersey.  She was a pathologist, not a field agent. He didn’t even know what kind of training she went through to get her position or if she knew how to protect herself.

 

To Mulder’s surprise, Scully bent and removed a pistol from an ankle holster he didn’t even know she was wearing.  She took the safety off and nodded to him. He removed his own weapon and nodded back.

 

Mulder went into the door on his left and Scully went through the door on the right.  He moved stealthily, keeping his back to the walls as he moved through each office in quick succession.  Through the windows, he saw something move and he held still, watching. A dark figure darted across the roof of the adjacent building and Mulder took off running towards the roof access in Scully’s direction.

 

“Scully!” he hissed, heading past all the open doors.  “She’s on the roof. Get to the roof!”

 

Without waiting to see if Scully had heard him, Mulder barreled up the stairs to the roof.  He made a quick assessment of the distance between the edge of the roof of the factory and the roof of the building below; about five feet to clear, two feet down.  He took a running start and easily jumped from one roof to the other, keeping his center of gravity low so that he could roll to a stop and not risk damage to his knees or shins.  No sooner had he made the leap, but Scully rolled to a stop behind him.

 

“Nice job,” he told her.

 

“You owe me dry cleaning.”

 

“Done.  I go left, you go right?”

 

Scully nodded once and crawled away under the metal girders supporting old air conditioning equipment and a water tower.  Mulder crawled in the opposite direction, heading towards the south corner of the building. Part of the roof was collapsed, accessible by a long stretch of boards from one end to the other.  Mulder took a deep breath, prayed for balance, and ran across one of the boards. He bent down to grab one of the beams and lowered himself into a corridor.

 

Out of nowhere, Mulder felt an impact against his ribs that sent him flat on his back and knocked the wind out of him.  He struggled to move. In his periphery, he could see shadows on the wall. Hands grabbed his leg and slowly moved up to his knees, to his thighs, to his waist, until the dark shape of a woman hovered above him, nose to nose.  He held still, partially in fear, partially in amazement.

 

“Mulder!” Scully called, her voice an echo in his ears.

 

The beast woman backed off of Mulder he tried to sit up, but she swatted her hand at him, knocking him down again.  He cried out from the pain of the impact to his chest and the back of his head. His eyes rolled back and then Scully was there, helping him to sit up.

 

“Mulder, you’re hurt!”

 

“Scully,” he groaned.

 

She cradled the back of his head with one hand and put her other hand to his chest.  He was still trying to get air into his lungs and he coughed and wheezed.

 

“Stay down,” she ordered, softly, guiding him back down to the ground.

 

“She was beautiful,” he said.

 

“And she just about ripped your lungs out.”

 

Mulder coughed again and lay helplessly on the ground as Scully assessed his wounds.  The feel of her hands on him made the pain a little easier to take.

 

******

 

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes later, Mulder wasn’t quite sure how much time had passed, but he felt better after catching his breath again and from the extra-strength Tylenol the paramedic gave him.  Dr. Diamond sat on the bumper of the ambulance where Mulder was being tended to and Scully paced back and forth on her phone. Mulder tried to get a word in whenever she went silent.

 

“She could’ve torn my head off, Scully,” Mulder said.  “But, she didn’t. She sensed I wasn’t a threat.”

 

“Yes,” Scully said, but not to Mulder, to her phone.  “I’ve been on hold for...no, I need to speak to someone that can get us federal jurisdiction on this case.”

 

“I wish you could’ve seen her,” Mulder said to Dr. Diamond.

 

“Mulder,” Scully said.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“How old would you say she was?”

 

“What?”

 

“The US assistant D.A. is on the phone with with the bureau right now and he wants to know what the hell is going on in Atlantic City.”

 

“Well tell him he's got a real live neanderthal on the loose.”  He shrugged and then winced when it hurt his ribs. “She was young.  I don't know, it's hard to say exactly. Why?”

 

“The Atlantic City major crime unit has filed a complaint against you for obstructing a murder investigation.”

 

“That’s a load of crap!”

 

“Agent Mulder!” Ranger Boulay called, running up to the ambulance.  “They’ve got her cornered in the second building.”

 

“Let’s go,” Mulder said, jumping out of the back of the ambulance.

 

“Mulder!” Scully called after him as he ran with Boulay towards the warehouses.

 

On one of the officer’s radios, he heard the voice of Detective Thompson.  “I got a man down, I got a naked woman just jumped from a second story window.  Suspect is headed south into the woods on foot.”

 

Boulay heard it as well, and he and Mulder stopped and looked at each other.  “We can take my truck,” Boulay said.

 

After making a quick stop back at the ambulance to get Scully and Dr. Diamond, the group piled into the ranger’s pickup and headed for the woods.  

 

“I know these woods,” Boulay said, taking a back road separate from line of police cars that rushed by.  “If she’s going for cover, she’s going out to the rocks.”

 

The truck bumped along and Boulay slowed even further as they reached a rocky area with giant boulders piled high and thick, almost mountainous.  They all had their eyes open wide, trying to find the woman before the police did.

 

“Look,” Dr. Diamond said, pointing up to a rockface.  The woman was scaling the side of the boulders, quick and lithe, disappearing and reappearing as she made her way higher.

 

“Can you reach her from here?” Mulder asked.

 

“I can try.”  Boulay stopped the car.  They all got out and the ranger took up his rifle.

 

A shot rang out, but it wasn’t from the ranger’s gun.  “No!” Mulder cried, watching the woman slide down the slope of a boulder.

 

Mulder ran through the forest, Scully behind him, Dr. Diamond behind her, and Boulay taking up the rear.  He slid to a stop in a slick of mud and behind a group of officers circling the body of the woman they’d just shot down.

 

“We got her,” one of the officers said into his radio.

 

Angered, Mulder pushed the man aside and crouched down next to the body.  He gently brought the matted hair of the dead woman back over her shoulder and then reached down to close her open eyes.  When he stood, Detective Thompson was behind him.

 

“Why’d you have to kill her?” Mulder asked.

 

“Same reason you kill a rabid animal,” Thompson replied.

 

“Don’t ever ask me for anything ever again.”

 

Mulder wanted to say more, wanted to throttle the detective with his bare hands, but Scully stepped up next to him and took his arm.  She gave a small shake of her head and pulled him back.

 

******

 

Scully drove them all back to Maryland.  The ride was silent and uncomfortable. Dr. Diamond got out of the car at the university parking lot and left without looking back.  It was Mulder’s car, and Scully was behind the wheel, but neither got out immediately.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mulder finally said.

 

“For what?” she asked.

 

“Bringing you into this mess.”

 

After a few more long moments of silence, Scully got out of the car and left.  Mulder was certain he’d never see her again and he stayed in the passenger seat for a long time, beating himself up over it.  When he finally got around to driving himself home, he collapsed onto his couch.

 

The next morning, he had a splitting headache and his ribs were sore.  He called in sick to work and spent the day sleeping and brooding. The following day, he felt better, but still sore.  He took another sick day and decided to bite the bullet and call Scully. The worst that could happen is that she wouldn’t take the call or she’d hang up on him, but he felt he had to try.

 

“Scully,” she answered.

 

“Scully, it’s me.”

 

“Mulder, how are you feeling?  I’ve been worried.”

 

“You...I’m fine.  You have?”

 

“Yes.”

 

A weight felt like it had been lifted from his shoulders.  “Well, I’m okay. You don’t need to worry.”

 

“Good.  I have some news for you.”

 

“You do?”

 

“It actually just came through.  It's the autopsy report on the woman's body from the Atlantic City coroner.”

 

“Glenna?”

 

“Yes, I called her yesterday and asked if she could send me her results once she had them.  They found fragments of human bones still in her digestive tract, they estimated her age to be 25 to 30.   They also allowed Dr. Diamond to do a medical exam of the body, but he found nothing that suggested prehistoric bone structure or physiology.  The ACPD has her listed as a Jane Doe and a search for her identity in state psychiatric records has begun, in earnest.”

 

“They’re not gonna find anything.”

 

“The body of the John Doe also miraculously appeared and I have that report as well.  He’s estimated to be about 40.”

 

“They were a pair, Scully, I know it.”

 

“There’s something else, Mulder.  The medical exam of the woman’s uterus indicates she may have given birth.”

 

“Offspring?”  Mulder nodded into the phone.  “She was protecting her children, Scully, it all makes perfect sense.  The male dies and she comes out of the woods in search of food.”

 

“Mulder, would you do me a favor?  Take the day off, get some rest, go have a beer or whatever it is you do to unwind.”

 

“I already took the day off, Scully.  Two days, actually. Now, I want to make an appointment with an ethnobiologist I know at the Smithsonian.  I think he’ll be interested in this.”

 

“I’m sorry we couldn’t save her.”

 

“I am too.  Scully, I…” He stopped on the verge of asking her out.  The thought of killing their professional relationship jumped into the back of his mind and he chickened out.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Nothing, I just remembered I need to call my sister.  I’ll speak to you later?”

 

“You know where my office is.”

 

“That, I do.”

 

Mulder hung up the phone feeling like he’d been given a reprieve he didn’t quite deserve.

 

******


	3. Chapter 3

The last thing Mulder would have expected was a call from Scully at three in the morning.  He had fallen asleep on the couch watching The Late Show and woken up to his cell phone and snow on the TV.

 

“Mulder,” he said, instantly alert, wondering what was wrong.

 

“Mulder, it’s me,” Scully said, quietly.  “Sorry to wake you, but I’ve got something for you, for a change of pace.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“I just received a call from Section Chief Blevins, asking me to go down to Bethesda Naval Hospital to take a look at a body.”

 

“The Section Chief called you personally?”

 

“Yes.  He also asked me to take you with me.”

 

“Me?”

 

“I don’t know what we’re walking into here, Mulder, but we must’ve caught someone’s attention with the Atlantic City case.”

 

“This isn’t just a ploy to make me hold a skull key or anything like that is it?  Payment in kind for dragging you into the field?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“Just checking.  I can meet you there in an hour.”

 

“I’ll see you then.”

 

******

 

Mulder was asked to show his ID to four separate guards just to gain entrance to the parking lot of the Naval Hospital.  Scully was already there, dressed like she was giving a lecture later in dark slacks and matching blazer. He felt underdressed in his jeans and sweater, but he didn’t know what they were doing there.

 

A guard met them at the entrance and led them down a corridor to a service elevator.  They went down two flights and exited into a dim hallway. Their escort turned them over into the hands of another guard, and their new escort led them to the morgue.  All the while, Mulder and Scully exchanged questioning looks.

 

A man and woman stood on the far side of the morgue, both in business attire, clearly not military and not medical attendants.  The man was tall, dark skinned, and wore a stern expression. The woman had almond eyes and olive skin. She wore her dark hair twisted and clipped up at the back of her head.  She stared at both Mulder and Scully, expressionless.

 

“Doctor Scully,” the man said.  “Agent Mulder. Chief Blevins assures us you’ll be cooperative.  We regret the inconvenience of the hour.”

 

“We need someone with experience in unusual or extraordinary matters that can assist in our investigation.”

 

Scully glanced at Mulder and he looked from the man to the woman.  “You’re not FBI are you?” he asked.

 

The woman stepped forward and handed Scully a clipboard.  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” she asked. Mulder had just enough time to steel himself as she yanked a sheet down over a body on slab.  The arm twitched and his gut clenched.

 

“Abnormal post mortem muscle reflex,” Scully read off the chart in her hand.

 

“Both corpses are still responding to high levels of electrostatic charge,” the woman continued.

 

“I’m sorry,” Scully said.  “Both corpses?”

 

The question went unanswered by the stone-faced man and woman.  Scully looked at Mulder again and he could see the agitation in her eyes.

 

“Any sign of external legions or surface burns?” Scully asked.

 

“None,” the man answered.

 

“Time of death?”

 

That question also went unanswered and Scully placed a hand on the corpse’s wrist.  Mulder pressed his lips together and thought about the Yankees winning the world series.

 

“Well,” Scully said.  “It can’t be long, the body’s still warm.”

 

“Somatic death occurred sometime over six hours ago,” the woman said.  “Their body temperatures have yet to drop below 98.3 degrees.”

 

“Where did you find them?” Mulder asked.  When he was met by silence, he shook his head.  “Look, at least tell us the mode of transport. That might tell us why the bodies haven't cooled.”  

 

The man and woman glanced at each other, but said nothing.

 

“Hey,” Mulder said, impatience winning out and raising the volume of his voice.  “You called us down here. If you want some answers you have to give some.”

 

“They traveled 60 minutes by air,” the man said.

 

“Thank you,” Mulder said, barely keeping the strong feelings of disdain out of his voice.

 

“Is this right?” Scully asked, raising her eyes from the chart she was flipping through.  “This says that the larynx, esophagus, and hyoid bone all have been crushed like chalk. There’s also no evidence of tissue damage.  The medical examiner concludes that for all intents and purposes, it appears as though the throats were crushed from the inside.”

 

In response, the woman handed Scully an X-ray film.  Scully glanced around the room and then stepped over to a lightbox on the wall.  She clipped the film into place and flipped the light on. Mulder went with her, studying the X-ray over her shoulder, but he had no true idea what he was looking for.

 

“Who are these guys?” Mulder asked and received no answer.

 

Annoyed, Scully flipped off the light box and turned around.  “Look, if you’ve already conducted your investigation, why consult us?”

 

“We want to know if you’ve ever seen anything like this,” the man said.

 

“Nope, never,” Mulder answered.

 

“Well,” the man said.  “Thank you for your time Agent Mulder, Doctor Scully.  If any inquiry into this meeting be made, we request full denial.”

 

Mulder put his hand on the small of Scully’s back to guide her out of the room.  “Oh, I’ll say you people already suffer from full denial.”

 

The guard that had escorted them into the room was no longer in the hallway when Mulder and Scully left.  Mulder was unnerved and annoyed. When the elevator doors opened, Scully pulled him inside.

 

“You lied,” she accused as the doors slid shut.  “I could see it on your face. You have seen this before.”

 

“I would never lie.”  He shrugged. “I merely willfully participated in a campaign of misinformation.”

 

“Who do you think they were?”

 

Mulder shrugged again and shoved his hands in his pockets.  “NSA? CIA? Some covert organization congress will uncover in the next scandal?  It's not important who they are but what they have and I'm sure they have no idea because they pulled us in.  I do know there are files. Each case with an element of what we saw tonight: residual electrostatic charge, internal mutilation without any external causality, but none has all the elements combined in one case.  Not that I’m aware of. I’ll have to do some deep digging.”

 

“How can the esophagus be crushed without the neck even being touched?”

 

“Psychokinetic manipulation.”

 

“Psychokinesis?”  Scully turned and her left eyebrow shot up.  “You mean how Carrie got even at the prom?”

 

“The Russians were doing studies on it.  The Chinese still are. Their findings are kept secret.”

 

“Okay, I’m intrigued.”

 

“I’m just not sure how to investigate yet when we have nothing to go on.”

 

“That’s where you’re wrong.”  Scully pulled a pair of glasses from her jacket pocket and held them up to the light.  On each of the lenses Mulder could see a perfect fingerprint.

 

“Scully,” he breathed, impressed with her ingenuity.

 

******

 

From the Naval Hospital, Mulder went to his office and Scully went to the Quantico labs to have the fingerprints she’d lifted analyzed.  It wasn’t even six a.m., but the bullpen on the 4th floor of the Hoover Building bustled with activity. There was even a message on his voicemail from AD Skinner’s secretary telling him to come up to a meeting as soon as he got in.

 

If anyone were to ask Mulder what Skinner was like, Mulder would say ‘tough, but fair.’  He didn’t know that much about his boss, but he had gathered a few facts in the year he’d worked under him.  Skinner was ex-Marine, a Vietnam vet, and a true, staunch patriot. He took protect and serve to heart, even if it meant breaking a rule or two, which Mulder could appreciate.  To anyone else, Skinner may seem like a very black and white kind of guy, but Mulder could tell he saw the world in various shades of grey.

 

“Agent Mulder,” Skinner greeted from behind his desk, motioning for him to sit down.

 

“Assistant Director,” Mulder nodded as he took a seat.  “Sorry for the casual attire. I didn’t have time to go home and change this morning.”

 

“I heard you were summoned to Bethesda by the Section Chief.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Any idea why Blevins would call you and a Quantico pathologist down there in the middle of the night?”

 

“None.”

 

“The Section Chief can make or break your career, I hope you know that.”

 

Mulder nodded non-committedly.  He wondered what Skinner was getting at.

 

“Whatever you’re doing, you have his attention,” Skinner said, tilting his head down just a bit so Mulder couldn’t see his eyes past the glare from his glasses.

 

The thought of having the attention of the Section Chief made Mulder uncomfortable.  He didn’t do well being scrutinized, which is why he liked working for someone like AD Skinner, who allowed him the room to work with his own particular methods, unorthodox as they may be at times.  

 

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Mulder asked.

 

“Depends on what you might want in the future.”

 

“Not to end up as a desk jockey.  No offense.”

 

Skinner shifted in his seat and leaned forward with his forearms pressed to his desk.  He twirled a pen with one hand. “No,” he said. “Management doesn’t seem to appeal to you.  You could be more though, Agent Mulder. I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”

 

“Never so eloquently, Sir.  Usually it’s in a more accusatory tone.”

 

“Think about what you might want.  If you manage to keep yourself in Blevins’ esteem, it could open doors.”

 

“I’ll keep that in mind.  Should I see myself out?”

 

“Do that.”

 

The meeting with Skinner had been a distraction.  He needed to follow through with his part of the investigation now and pull up any file he could find where psychokinesis might play a role.  He went back to his desk and got to work, but he couldn’t help but feel like there were eyes on him the whole time.

 

******

 

At nine a.m., Scully called his desk.  He had given some thought to what Skinner had said an it occurred to him, Blevins hadn’t been the one to call, she had.  For all he knew, Blevins didn’t even know who he was, not that he was really bothered by the idea. She tried to talk about the case, but he cut her short.

 

“Later,” he said.  “Do pathologists drink coffee?”

 

“In general, or me specifically?”

 

“You.”

 

“One cream, two sugars.”

 

“I’ll see you in 20.”

 

In the security of Scully’s office, after he handed her the piping hot cup of coffee he’d obtained from a cart outside the building, he relayed the brief conversation he’d had with his AD to her while she blew the steam off the top of her drink.  When she finally took a sip, he looked at her expectantly and she nodded her approval.

 

“But, the fact is, Mulder,” she said.  “He did ask for you. I don’t know anything about the Section Chief, other than what authority his title gives him.  I don’t know how you or I got onto his radar.”

 

“Same.  I think I’m more interested now in finding out how he was able to bring two of his agents in to consult on a case being handled by another agency.”

 

“And  _ why _ us?”

 

“If we figure out what we’re working on, maybe that’ll give us a clue.”

 

Scully tossed a file folder across her desk to Mulder.  “Mohamed Amalaki. Convictions: Illegal possession of firearms, illegal possession of explosives, falsification of export licenses.  He has ties to an extremist group operating in the US, The Isfahan. They take their name from a city in Iran. Recently, they've been working out of Philadelphia.”

 

“60 air minutes from Bethesda,” Mulder said.  “Looks like we’re headed to Philly.” He closed the file and got up, but Scully stayed at her desk.  “Scully?”

 

“Mulder, I appreciate that you want me with you on this, I really do, but I’m a pathologist.  My work is here.”

 

“You’re also a trained investigator, and a damned good one.  I could really use a partner on this and you...I think you’d be really valuable.  You  _ are _ really valuable to me.”

 

Her shoulders sagged a little and she looked at all the paperwork on her desk.  “I have autopsies scheduled,” she said. “Lectures to give. I can’t just…”

 

“Okay,” he said, setting his jaw.  “Fine, I get it.”

 

“No, Mulder, you don’t get it.”

 

“Enjoy the dead guys.  I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

 

“Hey!”  Scully stood suddenly and her chair scraped the floor loudly as she pushed it back with her legs.  She came around to where Mulder was standing and took a tight hold on his forearm. “I’m not asking you to shut me out of this case.  I am a phone call away, ready to help with whatever you find. I would love to go with you, I would, but I have responsibilities here that I can’t ignore.”

 

“Blevins asked  _ both _ of us on this, Scully.  You said so yourself.”

 

“He called us to consult, not to investigate.”

 

“He would know that I wouldn’t be able to walk away.  Maybe that’s what this is about.”

 

“I don’t think anyone’s asking you to walk away.”

 

“You’re just asking me to do it alone.”

 

She let go of his arm and went back to her desk.  “Sometimes, Mulder, I think you only hear what you want to hear.”

 

******

 

Mulder drove to Philadelphia by himself in a dark mood.  He stopped by his apartment to change clothes and then set out, irritated and melancholy.  Scully thought she knew him so well by only working two cases with him, well he would show her by not calling at all, even if he was in dire need of help, he wouldn’t call her.  He’d been doing his job just fine by himself since he started with the bureau, and that’s what he would do now.

 

The first thing he did in Philly was to check in with the PD and asked to speak with the officer who’d found two bodies last night with their throats crushed.  A beat cop came out to speak with Mulder and brought him to the crime scene, a narrow alley between two brick buildings. 

 

“This is where I found them,” the cop said, pointing up to a fire escape above a dumpster.

 

“You discovered the bodies yourself?”

 

“It was about 10 at night, I was on regular patrol.  Just saw them hanging there.”

 

“Have you taken any statements?”

 

“The people around here...well, they don’t see much, even if they saw a lot.  You know what I’m sayin’?”

 

Mulder walked the alley, looking up at the rickety fire escape from all angles.  He walked back to the entrance and spotted an ATM at the corner. It didn’t have a view of the alley, but it was certainly worth taking a look at the feed.

 

The bank manager turned over the surveillance feed from the ATM to Mulder, who took it down to the Philly branch office of the FBI to use their media equipment.  He also had a list of transactions by name and address, with the rest of the account details redacted. If he found nothing on the tape, he would interview every name on the list.

 

An hour of reviewing footage later, Mulder was nearly at the end of the line.  He was now in the nine o’clock hour, speeding through each transactions. He had seen quite a few dogs peeing on a tree in front of the ATM, as well as one man who decided it was also a great place to relieve himself.  He witnessed a man picking his nose as he waited for his money as well as an interaction between two people he was certain was a prostitution deal.

 

At the timestamp of 21:45:18, a woman approached the ATM looking nervous and agitated.  She kept glancing over her shoulder and her eyes were filled with tears. Suddenly, she was dragged to the side and out of frame.  Mulder paused the tape and backed up, frame-by-frame. Over the left shoulder of the woman, just before she was pulled away, was some sort of shadow like a ghostly image.  He ran down the names on the list and matched the timestamp to a woman named Lauren Kyte.

 

******

 

Lauren Kyte lived in a small Cape Cod home in Bensalem Township.  Before Mulder drove over to her house, he did a background check on her.  For the past 10 years, she was a secretary at HTG Industrials, a company that manufactured parts for the defense department.  She was unmarried and had no children. She had no record of arrests, not even a traffic ticket. The only red flag was a substantial amount of credit card debt, nearly $15,000. 

 

Mulder stepped up onto Lauren Kyte’s porch and pulled the screen door back to knock twice.  A short time later, the peep door swung back and he was met with the same terrified eyes he saw in the surveillance footage.

 

“Miss Kyte?” Mulder asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“My name is Fox Mulder, I’m with the FBI.”  He opened his ID wallet up to show her his badge.  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

 

“It’s not a good time.”

 

“It won’t take long, just a few minutes.”

 

Lauren hesitated and then she latched the peep door.  Mulder heard locks turning slowly and then she opened the door a few inches.  He stepped up to the threshold, slowly pushing the door open as she shuffled backwards.  Her eyes were downcast and she was trembling slightly.

 

“Have you seen either of these men before?” Mulder asked, holding up mug shots of Mohamed Amalaki and his suspected partner.  Without lifting her eyes, Lauren shook her head. “Take your time.”

 

“I’ve never seen them.”

 

“I’m afraid you have.”  Mulder took another photo out from his file, a screen capture of Lauren at the ATM at the moment she’s being dragged away.  With a bit of digital enhancement, the face of her two attackers is a lot more clear. “This is footage from your ATM. Can you tell me what happened last night?”

 

“Um…”  Lauren’s hands and voice were shaking as she held the photo of herself.  “I was depositing my paycheck. These guys just...they grabbed me and I ran away.  I didn’t want to file a report. I’m moving.”

 

Mulder nodded and looked around at the cardboard boxes stacked around the bare house.  “They were found dead.”

 

Lauren looked up and her shoulders jerked as though she was startled.  Mulder handed her another photo, the freeze frame of the ghostly image over her shoulder.

 

“Have you seen this person before?” Mulder asked.

 

Lauren’s eyes watered and she shook her head, refusing to take the picture.  “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you.”

 

“Does that mean you know?”

 

“It means I can’t tell you who it is.”

 

The fear in Lauren’s eyes and her voice was palpable.  Mulder didn’t want to push too far too soon. He didn’t know what she was afraid of, but she was definitely afraid.  He wondered what she was running away from by packing and leaving. She wasn’t a suspect, but he didn’t believe for a second that a woman her size and fragile nature could outmaneuver and escape from two trained attackers.  He took out his card and wrote his cell phone number on the back. After he passed it to her, he briefly held his hand over her clenched fist.

 

“When you  _ can _ tell me,” he said.  “I want you to call me.”

 

She nodded and shrugged and he let himself out.  He got into his requisitioned Taurus and as soon as he started it, the car sped forward of its own volition.  He pumped the brakes to no avail and he made a split second decision to turn the wheel as hard as he could. The car spun in the opposite direction and the rear end was clipped by another car making its way through the intersection.  His heart was pounding. When he got out of the car, he saw the drapes in the front windows of Lauren’s house snap shut, but not before he saw the horrified look on her face as she yanked them closed.

 

******

 

Both Mulder and the driver of the other vehicle were looked over by paramedics for any injuries.  His ribs were still sore from the Jersey Devil encounter, but other than that, and a headache, he was fine, as was the other driver.  His car was towed to a service station and as he waited, he pondered the case, Lauren Kyte, and the mysterious set of agents from the naval hospital.  The mechanics declared absolutely nothing wrong with the car, except for a problem with the headlights

 

Before he could stop himself, he pulled out his phone and called Scully, forgetting he was supposed to be mad at her.  She answered quickly and he slung his jacket over his shoulder as he walked outside of the service station to wait for a cab and talk to her.  He brought her up to speed on what he’d been doing in Philly, what he’d found, and the accident he’d just been in.

 

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

 

“Just a waiting-in-line-at-the-DMV-sized headache.”

 

“Someone must have tampered with the car while you were inside interviewing Miss Kyte.”

 

“Mechanics said everything is in order and the car only has 100 miles on it.  Nothing cut, nothing greased, but there is the matter with the headlights.”

 

“What’s the matter with the headlights?”

 

“They appear to be on.”

 

“What do you mean appear to be on?  Either they’re on, or they’re not.”

 

“They're not.  The filaments are heated due to massive levels of electrostatic charge.  Just like the bodies at the morgue. And isn't it interesting that Lauren Kyte was present at both incidents?”

 

“Mulder, you said she was in your presence at the house the entire time.”

 

“I know, but Scully, what if it's possible to somehow aise a body's electrostatic charge to levels we've been seeing and use that energy to affect objects?”

 

“If a person could generate that much energy, their body would break down.  They'd start glowing like your headlights.”

 

“I found evidence like this in some of the files I pulled this morning.  Furniture moving untouched, objects levitating, unexplained electrical discharges.  Frequently people who have psychokinetic power are unaware of their own capability.”

 

“Are you saying that Lauren Kyte crashed your car?”

 

“Either that or a poltergeist.”

 

“They're he-ere,” Scully sang, doing a fairly decent impression of Carolann from the Poltergeist movie.

 

“They may be.”

 

“Oh, come on Mulder, look at the tangible evidence: two Mid-East extremists are killed trying to assault a woman working for a manufacturer of parts for the Defense Department.  While you questioned her your car was sabotaged. Isn’t it possible that in both cases, someone else committed these acts? Maybe the same someone you said you saw in those ATM photos.  The mystery isn't psychokinetic energy, it's who is her accomplice?”

 

Mulder pondered the logic of what Scully argued, but his gut told him something different.  He stared at the glowing headlights of the Taurus in the open garage of the service station and then suddenly, they shut off.

 

“Huh,” he said.

 

“What?” she asked.

 

“The lights went out.”

 

******

 

Mulder took a taxi to an Enterprise Car Rental and picked up a new car, another Taurus.  He went back to Lauren Kyte’s house and parked down the street a bit, close enough that he could monitor the area for any activity, but far enough away that he wouldn’t be noticeable.  Several hours passed without so much as a mailman walking by to deliver mail. Lauren finally emerged from her house and got into a grey Honda parked in the driveway. 

 

From a respectable distance, Mulder tailed Lauren first to a florist, and then to a cemetery.  He was careful not to be seen and pulled to a stop shortly after entering the gates, watching her car meander through the one-lane road to a section of graves that sloped down from a small hill.  Lauren got out of the car and Mulder observed her through a pair of binoculars as she bent down and placed a bouquet of daffodils onto a grave. She wept over the plot for some time and then wiped her face and dusted off the front of her pants when she got up.  As soon as she left, Mulder headed over to the section to get a look at the grave she was so emotional over.

 

The headstone where Lauren placed the bouquet read: HOWARD GRAVES MARCH 4TH 1940 - OCTOBER 5TH 1993.  Next to it was a smaller headstone, engraved as: SARAH LYNN GRAVES SEPTEMBER 8 1966 - AUGUST 3 1969. Who were the Graves’ and why was Lauren visiting their headstones?

 

Mulder’s phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket as he walked back to his car.  “Mulder.”

 

“Mulder, it’s me,” Scully said.  “Where are you?”

 

“I’m at the Northwood Cemetery.  Why?”

 

“My train gets into Philadelphia Union Station in about 20 minutes.  Can you meet me?”

 

“Yeah.  Yes, of course.  I think I’m about 20 to 30 minutes away from there now.”

 

“I’ll meet you out front.”

 

Mulder hung up his phone with surprise.  He didn’t expect Scully to show up in Philly, not after her adamant refusal to come earlier.  Of which, he knew he owed her an apology for. 

 

Union Station reminded Mulder of the Parthenon.  Rush hour traffic was heavy and he searched the crowded walkway for a flash of Scully’s red hair to guide him.  He spotted her waiting near the corner, but he was stuck in the far lane waiting to merge into the pick up area.  He gave a brief honk of his horn in hopes of getting her attention and it worked. She was able to make her way to him before he could make his way to her.

 

“Thank you,” she said, getting into the car and rubbing her hands together by the heater.

 

“Of course.  What are you doing up here?”

 

“You were in an accident, Mulder, you probably shouldn’t even be driving right now, let alone investigating.”

 

“You didn’t come all this way to check up on me, did you?”

 

“Maybe I did.  But, I also brought something with me.”  She pulled a briefcase onto her lap to open it up.

 

“Eagles tickets?”

 

“I was able to do a more thorough search on Lauren Kyte.  It reveals an estrangement from her family. Phone records confirm no contact with her parents for the last two years.  She was the personal secretary of an executive at HTG Industrials up until about a month ago when he was found dead of suicide.”

 

“Suicide?”

 

“That’s three people associated with Lauren Kyte that are now dead within the past month.”

 

“Was that man’s name Howard Graves by any chance?”

 

“Yes, it was.”  She pulled out a photocopy of a newspaper clipping entitled Howard Graves Suicide Creates Shock.  “According to this article he was found in his bathtub with his wrists slashed.”

 

“Does it say anything about a daughter?  Sarah Lynn Graves?”

 

“Let me see.  I haven’t gone through everything I pulled on Mr. Graves yet.”  

 

While Scully scanned her file, Mulder steered the car towards the Philadelphia branch office.  If she didn’t come up with anything, he wanted to do more digging. There had to be a connection somewhere they were missing, something that would cause the deaths of a parts manufacturer and two Isfahan terrorists so close together.  Something more than the obvious common denominator: Lauren Kyte.

 

“I can’t find anything,” Scully said.  “Nothing on Sarah Lynn Graves. And nothing that might reveal the identity of Lauren Kyte's accomplice.”

 

******

 

At the branch office, Mulder toyed with the media equipment while Scully did more research on Howard Graves.  She was able to find a recent photo and the sad story of Sarah Lynn Graves.

 

“She was his daughter,” Scully said.  “Aged three, death by drowning. Someone left a pool gate open.  Her death caused a rift between Howard and his wife, who divorced a year later citing irreconcilable differences.  He never remarried.”

 

“If Sarah had lived, she’d be Lauren’s age,” Mulder pointed out.

 

“You’re not thinking that Lauren  _ is _ Sarah somehow, are you?”

 

“No, not at all.  More like a surrogate.  I saw her weeping over Howard’s tombstone.  She didn’t kill him. He was like a father to her, and she was like the daughter he didn’t get to see grow up, I’m guessing.”

 

“So, what then?”

 

“Check this out.”  Mulder showed her the magnified photo of the ghostly face from the ATM and put it side by side with the photo she was able to find of Howard Graves.

 

“I don’t understand,” she said.  “Howard Graves is alive?”

 

“Not necessarily.”

 

Scully narrowed her eyes and went through the papers in the file until she pulled out the death certificate for Howard Graves.  She looked it over and then handed it to Mulder. “I want to talk to this woman,” she said, pointing to the signature of the medical examiner who conducted his autopsy, Ellen Bledsoe.

 

******

 

The medical examiner’s office was in walking distance from the branch office.  Scully marched ahead, her steps short but brisk. Mulder kept pace, but stayed slightly behind her and let her take the lead.

 

“What’re you thinking, Scully?”

 

“Howard Graves faked his own death.”

 

“Do you know how hard it is to fake your own death?  Only one man has pulled it off, Elvis.”

 

“He and Lauren Kyte are in on something.  Maybe an illegal deal through his company.  Something the CIA or the NSA or wherever those agents were from was interested in.”

 

“You could be right.”

 

Scully stopped, right in front of the door to the medical examiner’s office.  “You think I’m right?”

 

“All you have to do is prove that Howard Graves is alive.”

 

******

 

“Howard Graves is very much dead,” ME Bledsoe told them after they’d been seated in her office.  She wore a bland expression. Her dark eyes were dull and uninterested. 

 

“May see the autopsy report, please?” Scully asked.

 

“Knock yourself out.”  She tossed the report over her desk to Scully.

 

Scully flipped through the report.  The ME blinked slowly at them slowly, but impatiently.  Mulder could tell she wished she had better things to do than cater to two FBI agents, but obviously she didn’t.

 

“Cause of death, arterial hemorrhage,” Scully said.  “Body transferred to the Delaware Valley Crematorium and ashes to be buried in Northwood Cemetery.”

 

“Four to six liters of blood down the drain,” ME Bledsoe answered.  “Literally.”

 

“Well, there’s also bloodwork missing here.”

 

“We only do that when we suspect homicide.”

 

“Did you run dental confirmation?”

 

“What for?  It was him?”

 

“But, how do you  _ know _ ?”

 

“It said so on the toe tag.”

 

Mulder would have laughed had the ME been trying to be funny and not so rude.  He could feel the anger rolling off Scully in waves, and silently congratulated her for holding her tongue and not playing the game she was being baited into.

 

“Do you know who made the positive ID on the body?” Mulder asked.

 

The ME shrugged, so Mulder turned to Scully who flipped through the pages of the report until she looked up at him.  “Lauren Kyte,” she said, raising her brows.

 

“How are we going to run a dental check or check for DNA if he was cremated?”

 

Scully licked the inside, upper corner of her mouth and Mulder gave her a sympathetic look.  He agreed with her, Howard Graves was Lauren Kyte’s accomplice, whether alive or dead. It would sure be a lot easier to prove if Graves really was alive though, and he was hoping Scully could pull it off.  Seems they were both at a standstill.

 

“He was a tissue and organ donor,” ME Bledsoe supplied after a long silence.  They both looked at her. Finally, the woman had said something helpful.

 

******

 

The ME provided one more helpful piece of information: the phone number for the hospital that distributed the organ donations for Howard Graves.  Back at the branch office, Scully placed the call and put the man that answered on speakerphone while they held for him to pull up his file.

 

“Howard Graves is in five different people,” the man said, after he came back to the phone.  “They harvested his organs immediately after death. His kidneys were sent to Boston, his liver to Dallas, and his corneas to Portland, Oregon.  They've all been transplanted. Because of his age, we could only cryopreserve the dura mater. We have Mr. Graves' hospital records, we'll extract a sample, run a test and in a couple of hours we can confirm the identity of the donor.”

 

“Thank you, I appreciate that,” Scully said.  “I’m going to give you my direct number. Please call me as soon as you have the results, it’s somewhat urgent.”

 

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

 

“What’s the dura mater?” Mulder asked, once Scully hung up the phone.

 

“The outer membrane of the brain and spinal cord.”

 

“Up until about two seconds ago I was going to suggest some Philly cheesesteaks for dinner.”

 

Scully looked at her watch and then bit her lip.  “I have to make a phone call. I’ll be right back.”

 

“Sure.”

 

After Scully left to make her phone call, Mulder flipped through the file she’d brought with her.  He’d never gotten a chance to look at it. His cell phone rang as he was scanning Lauren Kyte’s financial records.

 

“Mulder.”

 

“Mr. Mulder?” said a trembling, timid voice.

 

“Lauren?”

 

“How soon can you come to my house?”

 

“Why?”

 

“Please hurry.”

 

The click of disconnection was sharp in Mulder’s ear.  He jumped up from the borrowed desk he was using and headed out the door.  Scully was in the hallway on her cell phone and she gave him a questioning look.

 

“Lauren’s in some sort of trouble,” he said.

 

“I have to go,” Scully said into her phone.  “I’ll call you later.”

 

Mulder hustled out to his car with Scully behind him.  It was times like these that Mulder wished he had a patrol car to make things easier, but alas, he had to battle traffic like a regular citizen, albeit a citizen with defensive driver training.

 

“What if she’s setting us up, Mulder?” Scully asked.  “What if Graves is there and it’s a trap.”

 

“Then you can stay in the car and call for backup if things go haywire.”

 

“No way, I’m not staying in the car.”

 

“You packin’?”

 

“Do I have a weapon on me?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I always have a weapon on me.”

 

Mulder looked at her sideways.  She was such a conundrum. 

 

Lauren Kyte’s house was dark when they pulled up.  Scully pulled a gun from her ankle holster, yet again, and Mulder took his out as well.  It was almost Atlantic City all over again.

 

“How do you want to do this?” Scully asked.

 

“Don’t suppose I go right and you go left works in this situation.”

 

The scream they heard from inside the house made their decision for them.  Both of them went running towards the porch and Scully held her back to the wall as Mulder kicked the door open.  There was a woman all in black, from her boots to her leather jacket to her ski cap, lying dead in the entryway. Her throat was crushed.  A man, also in black, was suspended in midair in the front room, kicking his legs helplessly as he clutched at his throat. He fell to the ground in a heap.  Lauren was huddled behind a chair, whimpering.

 

“Jesus,” Scully said.  She knelt to feel for the pulse of the woman, and then the man, shaking her head at Mulder when she stood.  “Now what?”

 

Mulder crouched next to Lauren and looked over his shoulder at Scully.  “Call it in,” he said, quietly. “We’ll take Lauren with us.”

 

Scully nodded once and called 911 on her phone.  They took Lauren out to their car and Mulder waited with her while Scully talked to the officers that showed up.  Lauren shivered in the backseat, eyes vacant. Every so often a tear would roll down her cheek unnoticed. Scully got in the car and let him know they’d be receiving a police escort down to the station.

 

“Great,” Mulder muttered.  He was trying to keep the matter out of the hands of the PD.

 

The interrogation room they were given to talk to Lauren was a sickly shade of green.  Mulder wondered briefly if the intent was to make a perp confess by inducing nausea. Lauren sat on a metal chair, her limbs pulled in close to her body.  She said nothing, merely stared at the floor as both Mulder and Scully asked questions.

 

“You know, you're not under arrest,” Scully said.  “You're just here for questioning. The sooner you talk to us the sooner you get to go home.”  She paused and looked to Mulder who nodded encouragingly. “What happened to those people tonight?  Do you have any idea who they might be? Why did they attack you?”

 

Mulder tried a different tactic.  He pulled out a photo of Howard Graves and put it in front of Lauren.  Before he can start in on a new line of questioning, the agents he and Scully had encountered in the naval hospital walked in the door and Mulder pulled the photo back.

 

“Scully, Mulder,” the man said, and then nodded at an officer that walked into the room behind them.  “He’ll watch over her. Come with me, please.”

 

Mulder glanced at Scully and she gave him a brief lift of her brow, but followed the agents out of the interrogation room.

 

“You have seriously compromised our investigation,” the woman accused, as soon as the door was shut behind them.

 

“We were following a lead pertaining to one of our files,” Mulder said.

 

“I want to know every detail of your activities on this case,” the man ordered.

 

“What case?” Scully snapped.  “You’re the one withholding information.”

 

The mysterious agents stayed silent and Mulder shrugged his shoulders at them.  “Then we have nothing more to discuss,” he said. As he guided Scully away, the woman stepped up to block them from leaving.

 

“We believe HTG Industrials was selling restricted parts to the Isfahan,” she said.  “Partial serial numbers from their manifest were recovered in the wreckage of a July bombing of a Navy transport van.”

 

Now, Mulder thought, we’re getting somewhere.  “What’s Lauren Kyte’s involvement?” he asked.

 

“We don't quite know,” the man answered, clearly annoyed.  “Your actions impeded our investigation.”

 

“In any case,” the woman continued.  “We don't have enough evidence to hold her.  If she doesn't talk, she goes free and we lose our chance to break this company.”

 

“I can make her talk,” the man growled, his eyes narrowing and jaw hardening.

 

“Take my advice,” Mulder said.  “Don’t get rough with her.”

 

Scully inclined her head for Mulder to follow her away from the door as the other agents left them to enter the interrogation room.  She stood with her arms crossed next to the window.

 

“They’re not going to get anywhere with her,” Mulder assured.

 

Sighing, Scully looked at her watch for what Mulder estimated to be the tenth time since he’d picked her up from Union Station.  He felt badly about making her feel like she had to join him up in Philly, even if he did want her there with him.

 

“Scully,” he said.  “I’m a selfish SOB, and I’m sorry.”

 

“Hm?  What?”

 

“You didn’t want to come up here.”  He nodded down at her wristwatch. “You clearly have something I took you away from.”

 

“I chose to be here, Mulder.”

 

“I asked and you said no.”

 

“And I changed my mind.”

 

“It’s just that...I don’t want you to think of me as just another condescending prick representing the patriarchy.  The way I behaved this morning...you didn’t deserve that, and I’m sorry.”

 

“I don’t think of you in that way, Mulder.  I never have.”

 

He looked down into her eyes and she looked up at him and Mulder felt like it was a now or never moment.  He tried to think of the right thing to say to let her know he might be falling for her, but her phone rang and they both jumped.  She fumbled to pull it from her pocket and answer it.

 

“Scully,” she said, and he noticed her voice had dropped to a huskier level than usual.  “I see. Thank you. And thank you for doing it so quickly.” She hung up and stared out the window for a moment before she looked back up at Mulder.  “That was the lab. Howard Graves is very dead.”

 

“Damn,” he said, and she nodded.

 

“I’m going to make a phone call.”

 

“I’m going to hit the vending machine.  Want anything?”

 

“No, thank you.”

 

They parted ways, Scully moving one way down the hall and Mulder the other.  He was hoping for a package of sunflower seeds, but settled for a package of peanut M&Ms instead.  Scully hadn’t returned by the time he wandered back, so he sat in the rather large and accommodating windowsill and waited.

 

“Everything okay?” he asked, when Scully returned.

 

“Yes,” she answered, tersely.

 

“M&M?”

 

She took a green M&M from his palm and sat beside him.  They shared the package of candy in silence until the other agents finally emerged from the interrogation room.  The man was huffy and the woman gave Mulder and Scully an annoyed glance.

 

“Well, that was a waste of time,” the man said.

 

“Your turn,” the woman told them, flatly.  The pair stalked off.

 

Mulder inclined his head towards the door and Scully nodded.  They walked in, but Mulder stayed and kept the door open.

 

“I won’t talk to you either,” Lauren said.

 

“Okay, then you’re free to go,” Mulder told her.

 

Both Scully and Lauren looked up at Mulder in surprise.  Slowly, Lauren got up from her chair, but then her eyes teared up and she sat back down, fisting her hands in her lap.  Mulder let the door fall shut and moved to crouch down next to her chair.

 

“I can’t go back to that house,” Lauren whispered.

 

“Why?” Mulder asked.  “Because Howard Graves is there?”

 

“Howard is dead.”

 

“I know.  But, he’s watching over you, isn’t he?”

 

Lauren opened her mouth a little and then clenched her jaw.  She squeezed her eyes shut and gave what was almost an imperceptible nod.  Mulder pulled a small tape recorder out from his breast pocket and turned it on.  He set it on the table in front of Lauren and gently touched her shoulder as he got to his feet.  He motioned for Scully to take a seat in one of the empty chairs across from Lauren and then he sat down as well.

 

“Tell me about him,” Mulder said.

 

It took Lauren some time to get started and then she opened up.  Mulder just let her speak, hoping her stream of consciousness might produce some valuable information.

 

“I don't know if you've ever been a secretary,” she said.  “Sometimes your boss can talk as if you weren't even in the room, which can hurt, you know?  Sometimes you're all he  _ has _ to talk to, which is how it was all the time with me and Howard.  One night, late, I went into his office. He was crying, more scared than sad.  The Pentagon contracts were being canceled, the company was going under, he felt personally responsible for each of his employees.  Seeing and feeling their fear every day, it really wore him down. Then this one time, Dorland came with that group.”

 

“Who’s Dorland?” Mulder asked.

 

“Howard’s business partner.  They started the company together.”

 

“What group did Dorland bring in?”

 

“That mideast group...Isfahan, that terrorist group.  They'd buy parts at an outrageous price. Not just once, but for as long as they could get away with it.  That night Howard was crying, he'd just found out the Isfahan had just claimed responsibility for killing a couple of sailors in Florida.  He was never the same. And I thought that was why he killed himself. But, he didn't. I saw…”

 

“What did you see, Lauren?” Mulder asked.

 

Lauren looked up at both Mulder and Scully like a frightened animal.  “Howard showed me how Dorland had him killed,” she whispered. “Made it look like a suicide because he knew Howard was going to put an end to the deal.”

 

“And now Howard is protecting you.”

 

“It sounds so ridiculous,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.

 

“But, you believe it,” Scully interjected.

 

“He was closer to me than my father,” Lauren said, emphatically.  “I told him that. I still feel his presence. Sometimes...I even smell his aftershave.  If you just could've seen the things I've seen. I just...I just want all that to go away.  So, I’m leaving. If I leave, maybe he can move on.”

 

“That's not enough,” Scully said, surprising Mulder but getting out of her chair and going over to Lauren.  She laid a hand on her arm and bent closer to her. “You've been given the chance to tell him again. Take it.  Tell him you love him, by showing him. By helping us finish his unfinished business. Lauren, how will you ever be able to rest if he never can?”

 

“Okay.”  Lauren nodded up at Scully.  “Okay. Um, I feel like I’m a total mess.  Can I…”

 

“There’s a bathroom down the hall to the right,” Scully told her.

 

“What are you doing?” Mulder asked, once Lauren had left the room.  “You don’t believe in this.”

 

“Mulder, there's no such thing as ghosts or psychokinesis. I'm sure there's an explanation, but I believe that  _ she _ believes.  And my priority is to get her to help us stop this Dorland guy.”

 

“This could be an opportunity to observe spectral phenomena.”

 

“Are you really going to help Lauren by chasing shadows?”

 

Mulder shrugged, but he knew Scully was right.  They were there to stop a murderer and help put a stop to a woman that had been tormented enough.  The things he’d seen could just be added to the collection of other strange notations made in files over the years.  Maybe that was the warning Skinner had been trying to give him.

 

“We’ll never get a warrant at this hour,” Scully said.  “We’re going to have to wait until the morning.”

 

******

 

They made arrangements to keep Lauren at a safe house in the city.  Though there wasn’t much to fear from an outside source, Mulder laid awake most of the night, telling himself he couldn’t sleep because of the case.  In truth, he was thinking about the moment he shared with Scully outside of the interrogation room. They shared a connection. He felt it, and he knew Scully had to have felt it too.  It made him want to abandon the qualms he’d had about asking her out and just do it. To hell with what could be the best professional relationship he’d ever have, getting involved with Scully could just be the best relationship he’d ever have, period.

 

It was a long night.  While his insomnia raged, he also took the opportunity to brief the task force that was ready to assemble in the morning to surprise HTG with a warrant for search and seizure.  The warrant was being written overnight by a technologies expert in the Philly branch that would make sure all their bases were covered and they had a judge that would sign off on it first thing.

 

At dawn, Scully knocked on his door and he answered it a little slower than he could have, trying to downplay the fact that he hadn’t slept.  She looked him up and down like she knew his secret, but didn’t comment. Her clothes didn’t seem to be the least bit rumpled and she looked fresh as a daisy.  He was a tad jealous.

 

“How do you take _ your _ coffee, Mulder?”

 

“One cream, no sugar.”

 

“There’s a deli across the street.  I’ll be right back.”

 

“Okay.  I’m expecting a call from the Philly branch soon, I hope.  Once we’ve got the warrant, we’re gonna meet them at HTG.”

 

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

 

“I wasn’t worried.”

 

Scully gave him a smile over her shoulder and it melted him.  Dammit, he loved her. And he didn’t even know anything about her, he just knew that he loved her.  He closed the door to his room and freshened up as best that he could with the sparse accommodations.  The call from the Philly branch came about 10 minutes after Scully dropped off his coffee and he went to collect both her and Lauren from their room.

 

Lauren was calmer than she had been the day before and Mulder wondered if Scully had talked to her overnight and assured her in some way.  As they got closer to the offices of HTG though, she began to wring her hands in the backseat and chew on her bottom lip.

 

The task force had chosen an assembly point in the bowels of a parking garage across the street from HTG.  Mulder pulled up to the gate and the agent manning the attendant’s booth checked his ID and directed him to the lower level.  He parked the car amongst the swarm of agents and then looked back at Lauren and then to Scully.

 

“You ready?” he asked.

 

“Let’s go.”

 

The Philly agent that Mulder had been dealing with approached and shook his hand.  He passed over the warrant to him and Mulder handed it to Scully.

 

“Show them how it’s done,” he told her.

 

“Me?” she said.

 

“Yeah, you.  You’re in charge.”

 

Scully raised her brows and then turned and surveyed the agents milling about.  She stepped forward towards the center of the parking lot and then raised the warrant up in her right hand.  Her voice echoed throughout the lower level.

 

“All right, everyone,” she called.  “We have a warrant to search the premises for evidence of the sale of restricted manufactured parts.  The evidence may be in the form of falsified export licences, parts manifests, or communiques. It could be on computer disks or hard copy.”

 

Mulder was surprised to find the mysterious agents from whence he still had no idea they came, step up beside him.  The female agent joined Scully in the center of the circle.

 

“Once there, when in doubt, ask,” she added.  “We need this to be clean. This is the culmination of a year long investigation.  If we don't come out of there today with something proving a connection to the Isfahan, this guy could walk.”

 

“Let’s go!” Scully ordered. 

 

The agents began to quickly spill out of the parking garage like a herd of ants.  They spread out and entered the building from all entrances while armed officers manned the exits.  Scully and Mulder flanked Lauren and moved at a slower pace to keep her calm.

 

“What we’re looking for will most likely be in Dorland's office,” Scully said.  “We'll conduct the search, but we need you to guide us so we need you to be strong, okay?”

 

The office was in chaos and panic when they walked in.  Some secretaries were crying and others stood in shock. The agents sweeping through the aisles were already collecting papers and hard drives into boxes and loading them out.

 

Lauren gripped Mulder’s elbow and then pointed to a corner office where an angry looking man had emerged.  “That’s Dorland,” she said.

 

“Come on,” Scully said, leading the way as Mulder guided Lauren towards the man’s office.  He folded his arms and stayed in the doorway, giving them all a hardened stare which made Lauren tremble.  “Sir, I’m going to ask you only once to move out or you’ll be arrested for obstruction of justice.”

 

Dorland hesitated and then stepped to the side.  Inside the walls of the office of the man who murdered her surrogate father, Lauren gained a little confidence.  She went to his desk and smashed a framed photo with a paperweight.

 

“Hey!” Dorland said, coming after her.  Scully put a hand on his chest and backed him up.  “She’s not an agent! She has no right to destroy personal property.”

 

Lauren whirled around, a letter opener in her hand.  “Destroying property?” she spat. “What about that van that blew up and killed those servicemen?”

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, you bitch!”

 

Lauren screamed in frustration, squeezing her eyes shut and clenching her fists.  The door to the office suddenly slammed shut and Dorland was thrown back against it.  He clutched at his throat, seemingly pinned in place by an invisible force and choking.

 

“He can’t breathe!” Scully cried, and took a step towards him, but Mulder grabbed her and pulled her down to the ground, covering her head.  The overhead lights began to explode, shattering glass over them.

 

“Get down!” he shouted.  “Lauren, get down.”

 

“Don’t kill him, Howard!” Lauren yelled.  “Don’t kill him, help us find it!”

 

The letter opener Lauren held flew out of her hand at Dorland, stopping short in front of his face, pointed at his left eye.  Dorland, gasping for breath, fainted down the back of the door and the letter opener flew to the opposite side of the room and lodged itself in the wall.  Slowly, it ripped through the wallpaper in a straight line and then fell to the ground.

 

“Oh my god,” Scully whispered from underneath Mulder’s arms.

 

“Look,” Mulder said, pointing to the wall.  The corner of a floppy disk had become exposed from behind the wallpaper.

 

Lauren dropped to her knees and began to cry.

 

******

 

Dorland was arrested and taken away by the agents without agency.  Mulder was almost certain they were NSA, but maybe they were part of the rumored men in black, a group which was said to purposefully dress and behave so strangely that if anyone tried to describe an encounter with them, they’d come across as a lunatic.

 

Later in the day, after the offices were shut down and all witnesses were cleared, Mulder and Scully dropped Lauren off at home.  Scully assured her that the USDA was going to go after Dorland with everything they had, including the murder of Howard Graves.

 

“I’ll come back to testify when they need me,” Lauren said.

 

“Where will you go?” Scully asked.

 

“Away from here.”

 

Mulder and Scully watched from the curb as Lauren let herself into her front door and then closed it quietly behind her.  Scully’s gaze lingered after her and then she turned to Mulder.

 

“She has closure,” Scully said.  “Something to be grateful for.”

 

“Absolutely.  I think she’ll be okay.”

 

“What happened in that office, Mulder?”

 

“Unfinished business.”

 

Scully’s gaze drifted up to Mulder’s and there was an odd look of sadness in her eyes.  He couldn’t stop himself from reaching up and cupping her jaw. She leaned into him for a brief moment, but then turned her head out of his hand.

 

“I lost my father a year ago,” she said.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Lauren is lucky.  She knows without a doubt that Howard Graves loved her.”

 

“I’m sure your father loved you too.”

 

“You don’t know anything about me, Mulder,” she whispered.

 

“I know enough.”

 

“Hm.”  She turned away and scuffed the curb on her way to the passenger door of the rental car.

 

The mood had turned tense and sad and Mulder searched for a way to add some levity back to the air, otherwise it would be a long drive to DC.

 

“You know,” he said.  “I’ve been to Philly about 100 times, but I’ve never seen the Liberty Bell.”

 

“You’re not missing much.  It’s a big bell with a crack in it and you have to wait in a long line.”

 

“Yeah, but I’d still like to see it.”

 

“Why now?”

 

“Well, we’re here, so why not.  You wanna?” He lifted his brows at her in hopeful invitation as their eyes met across the hood of the car.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I’m due back in DC.”

 

“More birthday parties for six year olds that need chaperoning?” he teased.

 

“Nothing like that.”  She shook her head and opened the passenger door.  “My husband was in San Francisco for a conference this past week.  I was supposed to pick him up at the airport last night. Obviously, I couldn’t.”

 

******


	4. Chapter 4

They were more than halfway to DC before they talked about it.  He felt like Scully had dropped a bomb on him by suddenly announcing she was married.  Initially, he thought she might be joking and he’d given her an incredulous stare, to which she’d lowered her eyes a little and got in the car.  It felt like the ground had been pulled out from under him. His stomach had turned and bile rose up in his throat, which he swallowed back. It felt like it had taken him 10 minutes to open his own door, but it was probably only 30 seconds.

 

“You’re...married?” he’d stated, hands firmly at ten and two on the steering wheel.  He hadn’t yet turned the engine on.

 

“Yes.”

 

He’d glanced down at her left hand, thinking he’d missed a crucial clue, but her ring finger was bare.  “You don’t wear a ring.”

 

“Gets in the way of autopsies.”

 

“Oh.”

 

And that was the last thing they’d said to each other before he turned the car on.  The headache he’d had the day before returned, probably a combination of sleep deprivation and shock.  He tried to think about the case and what to put and what not to put in his forthcoming report, but his brain kept returning to one thought: she’s married.

 

He went back over every interaction he’d had with her over the past few months in his head.  She didn’t act like a married woman, but how was a married woman supposed to act? She’d never stopped him from flirting with her, but she didn’t really reciprocate either.  Was she merely tolerant of him because she was playing the game of the old boys’ club? Was he ever out of line? Why didn’t she tell him?

 

Traffic started to build up the closer they got to Baltimore and the smooth ride on the highway became stop and go.  There must have been an accident, something to bring things to a brief standstill, and Mulder grew restless. A big rig blocked his view ahead.  The monotony of talk radio away at him.

 

“Mulder,” she said, her voice low and soft.  “Are you angry with me?”

 

“Angry?”  He was genuinely surprised by her question.  “No, why would I be angry with you?”

 

“I don’t really discuss my private life.”

 

“Hey, message received.”  He lifted his fingers up from the steering wheel in surrender.  “I got it.”

 

“No, not...I mean, I apologize for not telling you sooner, I’m just not accustomed to sharing things like this.  I want...I would like to tell you anything you’d like to know.”

 

He figured starting with ‘were you aware I was possibly in love with you?’ wasn’t going to go over well for him or for her.  “How long have you been married?” he asked.

 

“Two years.”

 

“What does Mr. Scully do?”

 

“Waterston.  I kept my name.”

 

_ Good for you, _ Mulder thought.  “What does Mr. Waterston do?”

 

“Daniel is a surgeon.”

 

_ Well hooray for Daniel _ , the snide little voice in Mulder’s head chirped.

 

“How did you meet?”

 

“In med school.”

 

Mulder began to feel strange about the conversation they were having.  It felt like interrogating a witness that was burning with secrets, but had to be asked the right questions.  From her tone, her quick and eager reponses, and the open body language she had, he made the assessment that she had something to get off her chest and she needed to be led there.  He didn’t want to treat her like a suspect, but at this point, he’d be peppering in questions to catch her off guard. He took a chance.

 

“Did your father not approve?” he asked.

 

The time it took for Scully to answer had Mulder on edge, thinking he’d blown it.  The low voice of the talk show host on the radio droned on and car horns blared outside, but it felt like a deafening silence.

 

“No, he didn’t,” Scully finally said.

 

“How did that make you feel?”

 

“Are you trying to profile me, Agent Mulder?”

 

“Maybe a little, but you said I don’t know you.  I’d like to know you.”

 

“How would you like to be under the microscope?”

 

_ Okay, now we’re getting defensive _ , he thought.   _ Definitely hit a nerve. _

 

“Why don’t you have a partner?” she asked.

 

“I’m a pain in the ass to work with.”

 

“Be serious.”

 

“I’m not a pain in the ass to work with?”

 

“That’s not the reason.”

 

“No.  My previous partners chose to leave.  They said they couldn’t keep up, that I took too many leaps of logic and too many risks.”

 

“And how did that make you feel?”

 

“Isolated.  Lonely. Different.”

 

“Spooky?”

 

“You don’t need to be mean,” he said, mildly.  “I know what you’re trying to do.”

 

Scully was subdued by his response.  Her hands twisted together in her lap and she stared out her window.  Mulder focused on the traffic. It was easing up a bit and he picked up a little speed.

 

“I was my father’s favorite,” Scully said to the window.  “The good one, not flighty like my sister, or too sensitive like my little brother, or argumentative like my older brother.  Dana was perfect. Dana had straight A’s. Dana graduated early. Dana went to med school.”

 

_ Distancing herself,  _ Mulder thought.  _  Interesting. _

 

“Daniel was an attending physician when I was completing my residency,” she said.  “I was his student. He was married. He divorced his wife of nearly 20 years to propose to me.”

 

Of all the things Scully could have said about her marriage, that was the last thing he expected.  As the son of a woman who had been cheated on, openly and often, he was appalled. As the friend of a woman who had just confessed to having been a mistress, he was sympathetic.

 

“I’m not proud of it,” she said.  “I know that my actions, and that Daniel’s, caused a lot of pain for people.  His ex-wife and daughter, in particular. My family as well.”

 

“Why did you marry him?”

 

It took an inordinately long time for Scully to answer.  “Because I loved him.”

 

“Even if it meant disappointing your father?”

 

“It’s my life, Mulder.”

 

Mulder couldn’t think of anything in response.  He was conflicted about the situation. Part of him loved Scully even more for being so open and vulnerable with him.  Another part was deeply hurt by the fact that she’d withheld the simple fact of her marriage from him. He could understand her reticence.  It sounded to him like she went through life with an invisible scarlet letter on her chest. On the other hand, she’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it.

 

It was ridiculous, Mulder knew, to feel bitterness about such a thing, but he thought he loved her.  He didn’t think she was perfect, but he realized he’d put her on a kind of pedestal. She was right, he didn’t know her, he only knew the idea that he’d formed about her.

 

As they hit the Baltimore city limits, to make matters worse, it started to rain.  The traffic that had been breaking apart came to another crawl. The tap tap tap of the rain on the roof of the car was a pleasant distraction.  Mulder turned the windshield wipers on.

 

“Will you tell me something about yourself?” Scully asked.

 

A sense of shame came over Mulder.  He liked to think of himself as an open book sometimes simply because he usually spoke his mind and had no qualms about it, but he’d been judging Scully for keeping her personal life from him and he had his share of skeletons in his closet that he hadn’t disclosed either.  It was an opportunity, in a way, to give her tit for tat. To let her know she wasn’t the only one with demons.

 

“I have a sister,” he said.  “Younger sister. She’s a kindergarten teacher in Rhode Island, near where our mother lives.  She married her high school sweetheart, Josh, and I have a three year old nephew named Kyle.”

 

“Are you close?”

 

“I like to think so.  When she was eight, there was this man in the neighborhood.  We were told to stay away from him, but didn’t know why. I know it sounds cliche, but he told her he had a puppy she could play with.  He lured her out of our yard.”

 

“Did he…?”

 

Mulder shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  “One of the neighborhood mom’s saw him bring her into his house.  She called my mom. My mom called my father. A few of the dads went over with a baseball bat.  She wasn’t there but five minutes, but it was enough. It was enough. I think witnessing the dads bursting in and beating the hell out of the guy in front of her had more of a lasting effect.”

 

“Jesus,” Scully whispered.

 

“I got the hell beat out of me as well.  I was supposed to be watching her, but I was playing basketball with some friends.  She was right there one minute and then she wasn’t.”

 

“How old were you?”

 

“12.”

 

“That’s awful.”

 

“If it’s any consolation, Samantha is probably the most well-adjusted of all of us.  My parents eventually divorced, though not soon enough, in my opinion. I am somewhat estranged from them, my dad more so than my mom.”

 

“Sounds like you have reason to be.”

 

“I have a lot of reasons to be.  But, the real reason I told you this is because I believe it’s the reason I went into psychology and joined the FBI.”

 

“To help your sister?”

 

“No, to help me.  I was desperate to know why people did the things they did.  I thought the knowing would help me stop it and using that in law enforcement would be the ultimate way to do it.”

 

“I left behind a career in medicine because I thought I could make more of a difference with the FBI.”

 

“I think you have.”

  
“Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

 

“Well, you’ve made a difference to me.  I don’t think I would’ve been able to solve my last three cases without you.”

 

“You said it yourself, Mulder, you work better alone.  You knew what was happening to Lauren Kyte. You knew what we’d find in Atlantic City.  And you knew what Tooms was capable of. I just hold you back.”

 

“You’re wrong, Scully.  My last three partners said the same thing and I would be inclined to agree with them, but you’re wrong.  It’s one thing to have a feeling, to trust my instincts, but it’s another to have what I know validated by science.”

 

“I haven’t given you anything concrete to validate anything.”

 

“I disagree.  Just because something isn’t easily quantified doesn’t make it less real.  You saw what I saw, which means you can corroborate the facts. Maybe you can’t say for certain that the ghost of Howard Graves attacked Dorland, but you can say who  _ didn’t _ .”

 

“I’m not even sure what I saw, Mulder.  And, I certainly can’t explain it.”

 

Mulder glanced over to see if she was wearing the necklace with the cross charm on it and she was.  “You’re Christian?”

 

“Catholic.”

 

“How faithful are you?  On a scale of one to nun?”

 

“I’m a believer.”

 

“Okay, but you can’t prove God.”

 

“That’s why it’s called faith.”

 

“Exactly.  When the religious can’t explain something they call it a miracle and then call it a day.  When science can’t explain something, they just keep trying and they don’t give up. New discoveries are made every day.”

 

“So, you think one day we’ll be able to explain ghosts and liver-eating mutants through science?”

 

“Why not?  And maybe you’ll be the one to do it.”

 

That seemed to bring a lull to the conversation.  Scully looked contemplatively out the window again and Mulder concentrated on the road and the sea of tail lights in the dark and the rain.  DC loomed in the distance, but traffic was slow.

 

Mulder dropped Scully off at a parking garage near Union Station.  She grabbed her briefcase from the back seat and he told himself she hesitated because of the rain, but he knew it wasn’t that.  It had been an awkward car ride, to say the least, and now it was obvious they didn’t really know what to say. He wasn’t even quite sure he’d actually see her again.

 

“What do you do for the holidays, Mulder?” Scully suddenly asked.  “Do you go to Rhode Island?”

 

“It depends on whether or not my father is there.  My sister would like me to come up for Thanksgiving.  More than likely I’ll just stay home.”

 

“I had a feeling you might say that.  We’re having friends over for Thanksgiving.  I’d like to invite you.”

 

_ That would be quite the opposite of never seeing her again, _ he thought.  “You want me to come to your Thanksgiving?”

 

“It’s more like a small dinner party that happens to fall on the holiday.”

 

“I don’t know I’ll have to check with my fish.”

 

“Well, think about it.  I’d like to have you if you’d like to come.”

 

“See you around?”

 

She nodded once and then she was gone.

 

******

 

Mulder was exhausted by the time he got home.  Mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted.  His headache beat a steady pulse between his brows.  All he wanted to do was get some sleep. He dropped down onto his couch without even taking his shoes off and passed out, waking in the morning before his alarm.

 

Groggily, he got himself ready for work.  He was early to the office, which was unusual for him, but he really wanted to work up his report and be done with the case.  He gave his honest opinion of what had transpired, but hesitated to claim that psychokinesis was the definitive answer. In certain portions, he deferred to what he assumed would be in Scully’s report for clarification.  When he finished, he made an appointment to meet with Skinner and his secretary let him know he had a fifteen minute window the next hour.

 

“Agent Mulder,” Skinner greeted him at the door to admit him into the inner sanctum of his office.  “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

 

“Sir?”

 

“Have a seat.”  Skinner leaned back in his chair and regarded Mulder stoically.  “Section Chief Blevins added a commendation to your file this morning.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Seems the NSA agents made a very big bust in a year’s long case and they shared the credit with your quick work in Philadelphia.”

 

So it  _ was _ the NSA.  He knew it.  “Agent Scully’s assistance was also vital.”

 

“Don’t worry, I believe she’s been given a commendation as well.”

 

“Forgive me if this is impertinent, Sir, but you don’t look all that pleased.  You actually look a little constipated.”

 

“He has another case he wants to throw your way.”

 

“Something wrong with that?”

“Not at all.  Do you have your report?”

 

“Right here.”  Mulder indicated to the folder on his lap.

 

“I’ll review it before it’s submitted.”  Skinner reached out with his palm up.

 

Mulder handed over the report to him, but didn’t relinquish it right away.   “If I tell you I believe a ghost led us to recovering the smoking gun that made this bust so successful, is that what you’re looking for in a review?”

 

“The fact is, you made a good arrest, that’s all that matters.”

 

“I see.”

 

“Holly will give you the new casefile on the way out.”

 

Mulder nodded and let go of the report so Skinner could finally take it.  He picked up his new assignment from Holly and went back to his desk.

 

******

 

It was almost disappointing for Mulder to learn that the autopsy in his latest assignment had already been completed.  While he was driving back to DC from Philly, Benjamin Drake, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, had been electrocuted in the bathroom of his executive office.  The police suspected foul play as the electronic locks on the door had been tampered with. The attorney general, a good friend of Mr. Drake, was demanding to know how an electrical charge could throw a 180 pound man across a room.  Mulder thought that was a pretty good question.

 

Eurisko Technologies was a glass and steel highrise with the distinction of being shaped like an octagon.  The lobby was cold and grey. Mulder thought it was hideous. He showed his ID to the security guard up front, had to stand in front of a small camera on the desk for a photo, and was told to take the E elevator to the 29th floor.

 

As he passed through a turnstile to head to the elevator bank, he took note of the excessive security cameras in all corners that seemed to follow his every move.  More eyes, watching him. He felt a bit paranoid about it. Inside the elevator, two more cameras tracked his entry. He glanced up at one and then the other before punching the button for 29.

 

“Going up,” the elevator said, as the doors slid closed.

 

“Well, that’s a first,” he replied.  “Do you tell jokes as well?”

 

“Second floor.  Third floor. Fourth floor.”

 

“You really gotta work on your act.”

 

Suddenly, the elevator jolted to a stop and Mulder stumbled back into the wall, slamming his elbow into the rail.  He winced and rubbed the throbbing point on his arm. He pressed the button for 29 several times, but the elevator didn’t move.

 

“I take it back,” he mumbled.  “Killer set.”

 

There was a steel plate beneath all the buttons with a sleek, thin handle.  Mulder opened it and pulled out an emergency phone. Almost immediately, he was greeted with the dull voice of the security guard that had just granted him entry.

 

“This is Agent Fox Mulder,” he said.

 

“Is there a problem, Mr. Mulder?”

 

“Yeah uh…”

 

As suddenly as the elevator stopped, it began to rise again.  “Fifth floor. Sixth floor.”

 

“Actually, I think everything’s okay.”  Mulder hung up the phone and raised his eyes to both cameras as he did so.

 

******

 

Mulder was met by the systems engineer for the building, Claude Peterson, when he stepped off the elevator.  Peterson was a stout, middle-aged black man with an impressive gut and sagging jowls. He shuffled more than anything but he was quick about it and gave Mulder a firm handshake.  On the way to the executive washroom, he regaled Mulder with statistics about the automated features inside the building and their upkeep.

 

The first thing Mulder noticed about the crime scene was that the lock that was being blamed for killing Drake, had melted the key inside of it.  He put a pair of latex gloves on and touched the key, pressing on it slightly, but it was fused to the lock and wouldn’t budge. 

 

“What do you think happened?” Mulder asked.

 

“I think someone has tampered with the servo.  They switched the ground to the negative so that when Mr. Drake put his key in the lock…”

 

“He completed the circuit.”  Mulder looked over his shoulder at Peterson, who nodded.  “Takes a lot of power to melt a steel key,” he noted. Peterson shrugged.

 

The second thing Mulder noticed was the crack fragmenting the mirror above the sink.  The AG was right, how could an electrical charge from a door be so powerful as to send a man that far back into a mirror?

 

“The servo switch,” Mulder asked.  “Could it have been moved manually?”

 

“Sure,” Peterson said.  “But, whoever did it would’ve had to rewrite the COS.”

 

“What’s the COS?”

 

“The central operating system. It runs the building. It regulates everything from energy output to the volume of water in each toilet flush.”

 

“If someone wanted to override the COS?”

 

“Well, first he'd have to break the access codes which, well let's just say it wouldn't be easy.”

 

Mulder nodded and looked up, noting the camera in the corner of the room.  “I’m going to need a list of all the people with that know-how.”

 

“It’ll be a pretty short list.”

 

“Would you be on it?”

 

“Me?”  Peterson looked offended and put his hands up in innocence as he shook his head.  “Look, man, I'm just a glorified building super. All I do is monitor the system. Make sure it's functioning properly.  Like when I saw the overload in Mr. Drake's office.”

 

“What about the phone lines?  Does the COS monitor all phone calls?”

 

“It does.”

 

“Are those calls recorded?”  Mulder looked at a phone embedded in the wall, the receiver dangling by the coiled cord.  

 

“Sure are.”

 

“I’d like to hear the last call made from this room, please.”

 

******

 

On the way back to the office, Mulder pulled out his tape recorder to make a few notes about the profile he was forming.

 

“Both the statistical rarity of homicidal electrocution and the complexity of the crime indicate a certain devious premeditation,” he said.  “There are much simpler ways of killing someone, which leads me to believe that the guy we’re looking for was some kind of sociopathic game player.”

 

Mulder paused the recording and considered the call log he’d had Peterson pull.  The last call on the executive washroom phone was incoming, not outgoing, and it came from inside the building.  It was a robocall, noting the precise time as 7:35 p.m. EST. Mulder turned his recorder back on.

 

“Whoever made the call to Drake wanted to make sure he took the bait.  We might be looking for some type of a recluse since he designed a trap not only to avoid detection, but to avoid contact with the victim.”

 

The first thing Mulder did when he was at his desk, was pull up everything in the system on the one name that Peterson supplied him with: Brad Wilczek.  Wilczek fit Mulder’s hastily formed profile to a T. He was a genius with a 200 IQ. He had started Eurisko at the age of 22, the brains behind the operation, and subsequently, had a falling out with Drake, the money behind the brains.  Ultimately, Wilczek was issued a 400 million dollar payout and since then, held nothing back when it came to how much he despised Benjamin Drake. Their feud was so intense in the tech world that it was headline news.

 

Wilczek was the perfect suspect, Mulder thought, so perfect it was too perfect.  Something felt off about it, but he was the only name on the list, so Mulder would have to set up an interview.  

 

******

 

On the drive out to a posh area of Virginia that Mulder had only heard of, but never been to, his mind wandered to thoughts of Scully.  He wondered what she had done last night after she made it home. What, if anything, she’d told her husband about him or the case. He wondered what she’d think of this case and if she’d have different thoughts about the effects of electrocution on a body.  She’d probably know exactly how many volts it would take to fling a man across a room. She’d probably know exactly how many volts it would take to melt a key into a lock. She seemed to know a lot of things like that.

 

Damn, but she was a distraction to him.  A brilliant, funny, beautiful,  _ married _ distraction.  How stupid he’d been to think she’d be single.  It didn’t even shock him that a man had left his wife for her.  The way she conducted herself, asserted herself, how unabashed she was about her competence, it was all very alluring.

 

Mulder had to force himself to focus as he pulled into a gated driveway and parked at what looked like a country club, but was the home of Brad Wilczek.  He noted cameras capturing all angles, just like Eurisko headquarters. Wilczek answered his own door, dressed head to toe in white. White scrubs and white t-shirt under a white jacket.  He had shaggy brown hair passed his shoulders and round glasses.

 

“Mr. Wilczek, my name is Fox Mulder, I’m with the FBI.”

 

“Took you long enough,” Wilczek snorted, pulling the door back so Mulder could enter.  Just like Wilczek himself, the house was a dazzling array of white. “Take your shoes off, please.”

 

Mulder stepped out of his dress shoes and followed a barefoot Wilczek through his white castle into a sunken living room with white plush carpet and white furniture.  He flopped down into a white chair and indicated to the chair opposite him. Mulder perched on the edge and leaned forward a little with his arms on his knees.

 

“Tell me about Benjamin Drake,” Mulder said.

 

“Drake was an ass,” Wilczek answered.  “A shell of a man and a fraud.”

 

“Why do you say that?”

 

“He liked his pressed suits and things that fit into neat little boxes that he could understand.  Things like market shares and third quarter profits.”

 

“And you had a different vision for the company?”

 

“I started Eurisko out of my parents garage after I’d spent a year following around The Grateful Dead.  Do you know what Eurisko means?”

 

“It’s Greek, isn’t it?  ‘I learn things?’”

 

“Close.  ‘I  _ discover _ things.’  Drake wasn’t interested in discovery.  He was a short-sighted, power hungry opportunist.”

 

“So, it’s safe to say you felt taken advantage of him?”

 

“Let me show you something.”  Wilczek got up and Mulder followed him up a short flight of stairs to a landing that was boxed in by windows that overlooked the grounds of his house.  In the center was a white table with a large computer monitor He entered a few commands and a floor plan appeared on the monitor. “This is SmartHome,” he said.  “From this prototype, I have access to every square foot of my house. This place is as safe as Fort Knox and as energy efficient as your average igloo. We were two years ahead of Microsoft and Cebus when Drake, in his infinite wisdom, killed the program.”

 

“Is this system related to the one in corporate headquarters?”

 

“Variation on a theme.”

 

“In your opinion, how many people know the system well enough to override it?”

 

“Not many.”

 

“Could someone have hacked into the system?”

 

“Well, not your average phone freak, that's for sure.  But, there's plenty of kooks out there. Data travelers, electro wizards, techno anarchists.  Anything's possible.”

 

“Could you have hacked it?”

 

Wilczek snorted in amusement.  “I designed it. It’s  _ my _ system.  But, that’s why you’re here isn’t it?  I’m a logical suspect.”

 

“You don’t seem too worried.”

 

“It's a puzzle, Mr. Mulder.  People like me like puzzles. We enjoy walking down unpredictable avenues of thought, turning new corners.  But, as a general rule, people like me don’t commit murder.”

 

“There are exceptions to every rule.”

 

Wilczek shrugged.  Mulder felt done with his interview.  Something about the whiteness of the house and the extreme confidence of Wilczek gave him the creeps.  He put his shoes back on and left without lacing them. He waited until he was at least a 10 minute drive away from Wilczek’s house to pull over and add to his case notes on his recorder.

 

“Wilczek has a predilection for elaborate game playing.  He possesses an intimate knowledge of the Eurisko building and he has a demonstrable motive for killing Benjamin Drake.  Is this a well-thought out frame job, or is it a clever ruse by Wilczek himself? He’s an eccentric egoist, but I’m not convinced he’s capable of murder.  I believe there is more than meets the eye here.”

 

******

 

Instead of heading back to his desk at work, Mulder headed down to the voice biometrics lab in the sub basement.  There was a piece of equipment down there, a computer spectrogram capable of identifying individual speech patterns, that he’d seen used in demonstrations, but he thought it might be helpful to him in this case.  One of the lab techs showed him how to use it and he spent the next two hours down there splicing clips from a recording of Brad Wilczek giving a lecture at the Smithsonian until he had the exact phrase from the recorded phone call to Drake’s washroom.

 

“At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7:35 p.m.”

 

Mulder played his spliced clip several times over and then added the recording that had been provided to him on a floppy disk from Peterson.  He stacked them together and then had the spectrogram analyze the results. It came back as a match.

 

Mulder sat back in his chair, thinking.  He had motive, means, and a scant piece of evidence that pointed the finger at Wilczek.  He could probably have a warrant issued within the hour if he chose to pursue it, but something held him back.  He had the urge to call Scully and ask for her advice. People had always looked at him like he was a little crazy when he told them he often trusted his gut to tell him what to do, but she hadn’t.  She’d even told him his gut was right, and right now, his gut told him that Wilczek was not the killer. But, someone was sure going out of their way to make it look like it.

 

Mulder saved the files he’d been working on to a floppy disk and decided to call it a day.  He would give it some thought overnight and if he felt differently in the morning, he would have the warrant issued to bring Wilczek in.

 

******

 

Just before midnight, and just before Mulder was about to try to catch some sleep, he received a call from AD Skinner on his home phone.  Brad Wilczek was in FBI custody after having confessed to the murder of Benjamin Drake. In addition, a security guard at Eurisko was also dead, having plummeted to his death in a faulty elevator while on his way to stop Wilczek from essentially breaking into the building.

 

“I’ll be right down,” Mulder said, and hung up.

 

It didn’t make sense to him.  If Wilczek was guilty, why would he go back to Eurisko?  Even if he wanted to cover his tracks somehow, surely he could have done that remotely.  The building was heavily monitored by cameras and computer systems. Wilczek was smarter than that.

 

At the FBI detention center, Mulder was nearly turned away for not having a code five clearance, but a man in a dark suit with a square jaw, lacking a neck, came out from the security office and waved him through.  The guards on duty all seemed to snap to attention when he passed by. He looked familiar to Mulder, but he couldn’t quite place him, and then it dawned on him.

 

“You’re Section Chief Blevins,” he said.  

 

“This way, Agent Mulder.”  He led Mulder down a long and winding corridor.  They only thing Mulder could tell was that they were headed underground, further and further underground.

 

“What’s your interest in me, Sir?”

 

“I like your tenacity, Agent Mulder.  You have five minutes with Wilczek before he’s out of my hands.”

 

“Code five is a defense level security.  What does the defense department want with him?”

 

“What do you think they'd want with the most innovative programmer in this hemisphere?”

 

“Software.”

 

“For years, Wilczek has thumbed his nose at any contract involving weapons applications.  He's a bleeding heart.”

 

“So, they set him up?”

 

“Not that I’m aware of.”

 

“What kind of software?”

 

“How much do you know about artificial intelligence?”

 

“I thought it was only theoretical.”

 

“It was, until two years ago.  You remember Helsinki, the first time that a chess playing computer ever beat a Grand Master?”

 

“Are you saying that was Wilczek's program?” 

 

“And the rumor was that he did it by developing the first adaptive network.”

 

“Adaptive network?”

 

“It's a learning machine.  A computer that actually thinks.  And it's become something of a holy grail for some of our more acquisitive colleagues in the Department of Defense.”

 

“He didn’t kill Benjamin Drake.”

 

“I know that.”  Blevins stopped at a door and punched in a code on a keypad.  The door opened and he led Mulder inside a small interrogation room where a guard was posted in front of another door.  Blevins snapped his fingers at the man and he gave a sharp nod before leaving. There was a black laptop computer on a metal table and two chairs in the room.

 

“What do you want me to do?” Mulder asked.

 

“Don’t let them get their hands on it,” Blevins answered, leaning in towards Mulder and speaking in a low voice.  He drew back and knocked on the interior door in the room twice and then left.

 

A few moments after Blevins exited, Wilczek was led into the room and he sat down glumly in one of the chairs.  Mulder sat across from him and they stared at each other for a few moments.

 

“They’re making me wear shoes,” Wilczek said, annoyed.  “What do you want?”   
  
“I want you to tell me why you're willing to spend the rest of your life in prison for a crime you didn't commit.”   
  
Wilczek shifted in his chair.  “What are you talking about? I'm guilty.”   
  
“You're protecting a machine, the Central Operating System at Eurisko.  The COS project was posting big losses for Eurisko and Drake was about to terminate the program.”

 

“You think I care that Drake was losing money?”

 

“No, but I think you know that the COS cared.  It killed Drake in an act of self-preservation.  It's the primary instinct of all sentient beings.”   
  
“If I'm protecting anything, it's not the machine.”   
  
“Then what?”   
  
Wilczek sighed and glanced from Mulder to the laptop computer on the table, and then back at Mulder.  “After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life regretting he'd ever glimpsed an atom.”   
  
“Oppenheimer may have regretted his actions but he never denied responsibility for them.”   
  
“He loved the work, Mr. Mulder.”  Wilczek scowled. “His mistake was in sharing it with an immoral government.  I  _ won't _ make the same mistake.”   
  
“ _ Your _ machine killed Drake.  And a security guard.”   
  
“Yes, my machine.  I’m responsible.” Wilczek shrugged.   
  
“And are you willing to accept the risk that your machine will kill again?”   
  
“There’s nothing I can do.”   
  
“Sure there is.  You tell me how to destroy it.”

 

“You think it’s that simple?”  Wilczek leaned forward and shook his head at Mulder.  “It knows  _ everything _ .”

 

“Show me,” Mulder demanded.

 

******

 

Mulder pulled into the Eurisko parking garage in the wee hours of the morning.  His license plate had been changed from his government issued plate to a VA vanity plate reading EURISKO.  He drove up to the camera at the gate and waited at a red light to be granted access. The light turned green and the gate rolled up.  He pulled forward and suddenly, the gate came crashing back down on his hood, setting off his horn. Quickly, he got out of the car and slipped under the crashed gate to enter the building through the parking garage.

 

“There goes the element of surprise,” he mumbled to himself, searching for an entrance to the stairwell.  When he found it, he hesitated, and tapped the door handle with his palm a few times. When nothing happened, quickly yanked it open.  He looked up at the endless spiral of stairs and took a deep breath. Good thing he ran track in high school and played basketball regularly.  29 flights was no walk in the park. 

 

Halfway up, Mulder was starting the feel the burn of the climb.  He took a moment to pause and breathe and scowl at the cameras watching his every move.  The thing he would most enjoy about destroying the COS would be cutting the power on all those damn cameras.  The thought spurred him on and he made his way up the rest of the stairs with renewed purpose.

 

At the 28th floor, the lights went out.  “Oh, come on,” Mulder said. He fumbled for the flashlight in his pocket and turned it on.  He shined it up at a camera in the corner of the stairwell, hoping to blind it. He trudged up the last flight, breathing hard, and stared at the door.  A sign on the door read NO ACCESS.

 

As he did with the door in the parking garage, he tapped the handle a few times and then tried to turn it, but it was locked.  He slipped a pair of gardening gloves on and slipped an insulated screwdriver out of his breast pocket. He counted slowly to three and then touched the screwdriver to the lock.  Sparks flew and he moved his arm up to protect his face. The door whined a low alarm, but didn’t open.

 

Annoyed, Mulder looked up at a camera.  “What’re you looking at?” he asked it, taking off one of his gloves to shove it over the lens.  The camera wiggled back and forth as though trying to dislodge the glove.

 

There was a vent in the ceiling, which Mulder thought about opening up and crawling through, but he wasn’t quite sure he could fit.  Too bad Scully wasn’t with him. He could boost her up and she could crawl through the shaft and open the door from the inside.

 

Scully’s not here, he told himself.  You have to figure out a way to do this on your own, like you always have.  As he was contemplating his next move, the door suddenly opened and a flashlight was shined in his face.

 

“Agent Mulder?”

 

“Peterson?”   _ What in the world is that man doing here at this time of night?  _ Mulder thought.

 

“What’re you doing here?”

 

“I need to see the COS.”

 

“The machine's been acting all crazy,” he said, guiding Mulder into a room with enormous servers and monitors.  “Power surges. Shutting off, turning back on. That kind of thing.”

 

“I need to see the B port.”

 

“Yeah, sure.  It’s right back here.”  Peterson pointed to a panel at the side of a server with his flashlight.

 

“Thanks.”  Mulder pulled the panel open and then got out a small bag of tools he’d been shown what to do with.

 

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

 

Mulder didn’t answer, instead he attached an electrode to an open port and then looked around the corner at one of the monitors on the wall.  ACCESS DENIED. “Dammit,” he said, and pulled the electrode out to plug it into the next port. BEGIN ALGORITHM CODE PROGRAM.

 

Triumphant, Mulder turned to rush to a keyboard to load the virus Wilczek had provided him with, but Peterson was holding a small revolver on him.

 

“I've been trying to access the CPU for the past two years,” Peterson said.  “You’re here five minutes and have it running. Who are you?”

 

“Actually, I’ve been here more like an hour.  Climbing 29 flights of stairs is a bitch.”

 

“Put your hands up.”

 

“How cliché,” Mulder retorted, lifting his hands so that his palms were up by his shoulders.  “Defense department?”

 

“Let’s just say our paychecks are signed by the same person.  Where’s the disk?”

 

“What disk?”

 

“Don’t test my resolve, Agent Mulder.”

 

Mulder assessed Peterson’s capabilities.  He was overweight, but sturdy, and there probably wasn’t much of a chance Mulder could take him down.  He held the gun amateurishly though, like someone who had never really held a gun before. He could probably disarm him quite easily, but he’d have to do it quickly.  The only weapon Mulder had on himself was the disk.

 

“In my pocket,” Mulder said, nodding down at his breast pocket.  He held Peterson’s gaze and didn’t move his hands. He would force the man to come to him, lure him close enough so that he could make his move.

 

Peterson stepped towards Mulder, the gun low in his bent arm.  If he fired, he’d probably hit Mulder in the gut, which would be a hell of a gunshot wound to have to bear.  Subtly, Mulder shifted his arm back a little so his body was at a slight angle. When Peterson reached for his pocket, he brought one arm down over his, twisting it back at the elbow, which he knew from experience was intensely painful.  Peterson howled and Mulder ripped the gun out of his hand. Within seconds, he had the barrel open and the bullets in his palm.

 

“You’re making a mistake,” Peterson growled through gritted teeth, holding his arm close to his body.  “This operation is more sensitive than you can possibly imagine.”

 

“Shut up,” Mulder said, pocketing the gun and then pulling out the floppy disk.

 

“The technology in this machine is of enormous scientific interest.”

 

“The machine's a monster.  It's already killed two people.  Your department won't be able to handle it any better than Wilczek did.”

 

“You will be held accountable for this.”

 

“I’m shaking in my boots.”  Mulder ignored Peterson’s pleas and slipped the disk into the drive.  He pressed the three-key command that Wilczek had given him and stepped back.

 

“What’re you doing, Brad?” The robotic voice of the computer echoed in the room.  “Don’t do this, Brad.” The voice became garbled and the monitors became filled with an endless stream of programming language.  The lights flickered on and off and the cameras in the room went haywire. “Why, Brad?” were the computer’s dying words.

 

******

 

Sleep-deprived, unshaven, in yesterday’s clothes, Mulder trudged into work.  After subduing Peterson and shutting down the COS, he called AD Skinner and filled him in on his whereabouts.  A task force was dispatched to Eurisko to secure the building. The Department of Defense also dispatched a task force and Mulder left the two agencies to duke it out over who had jurisdiction over the remains of Eurisko Technologies.

 

He was at his desk for no more than two minutes before he was summoned to the fifth floor, to the office of Section Chief Blevins.  Wearily, Mulder headed upstairs and into the realm of upper management.

 

For a man of his level of power within the organization, Mulder was surprised by how spartan his office was.  It was nothing like any of the ADs he’d worked under. Blevins office was cramped and cluttered. The secretary outside his door could’ve worked for J. Edgar Hoover, back in the day.

 

Blevins had a more brusque demeanor than he did the night before, but he welcomed Mulder into his office and closed the door behind him.  He told his secretary to hold all his calls and then passed a file folder to Mulder before he sat down.

 

“The DOD is going after Wilczek with everything they’ve got,” Mulder read.

 

“It’s what they call a hard bargain,” Blevins answered. 

 

“He’s not going to take a deal.”

 

“Loss of freedom does funny things to a man.  Don’t forget, Wilczek confessed to two murders.”

 

Mulder closed the file folder in annoyance.  “And I destroyed the only evidence that could have exonerated him.”

 

“Brad Wilczek is not an innocent man, Agent Mulder.”

 

“Why, because he created the COS?”

 

“No, because he was willing to go to any lengths to see its development through.  He was close to closing in on a deal with the Chinese to provide them with a system that would infiltrate the US government.  You essentially put a stop to that.”

 

Mulder fell silent.  He felt used somehow and he didn’t like being kept in the dark.  Certainly there were things he wasn’t cleared to know, but if the stakes were so high, he shouldn’t have even been investigating this case in the first place.

 

“Why me?” he asked.  “Am I being tested for something?”

 

“You’re not being tested.  I already know what I need to know.”

 

“Which is what?”

 

“You enjoy a challenge, don’t you Agent Mulder?”

 

“In what respect?”

 

“You were doing so well in the VCU, but profiling was too easy for you, wasn’t it?”

 

“I wouldn’t say it was easy, no.”  Mulder pulled uncomfortably at the lapels of his suit jacket and shifted in his chair.

 

“But, it came naturally to you.”

 

“Maybe.  Where are you going with this?”

 

“What you do now, shouldering the cases no one wants to touch, what compels you to do it?”

 

“Someone needs to do it.”

 

“Someone, being you?”

 

“Why not me?”

 

“No,  _ why _ you?”

 

Mulder almost looked around for cameras in the room.  He felt just as under the microscope in Blevins’ office as he did in the Eurisko building and Brad Wilczek’s house.  The scrutinizing glare of the section chief didn’t help.

 

“I’ve been told I have a unique perspective,” Mulder said.

 

“That’s what all your ex-partners have said.  I believe one of them was quoted as saying your abilities were ‘otherworldly.’”

 

“Am I in here for a slap on the wrist for something?  Or does this meeting have a point?” Mulder knew he was being impertinent at this point, but his patience was worn thin and he was tired.

 

“I’m going to give you some files, Agent Mulder.  Old files.”

 

“Cold cases?”

 

“You could say that.  In some circles, they’re known as the x-files.”

 

“I’ve never heard of them.”

 

“But, you’ve seen them.  You just haven’t realized it.”  Blevins got up from his desk and opened a filing cabinet that was pressed to the corner of the office.  He pulled out a handful of red folders and gave them to Mulder.

 

“What would you like me to do with these?”

 

“Review them.  Analyze them. Report back in one week’s time.”

 

“That’s it?”

 

“Some of those cases date back to the infancy of the bureau.  I want to know what you think about them.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“I’ve also instructed AD Skinner that you’re to be on desk duty this next week for a special review assignment.  You won’t accept a new case until after we’ve met again.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Take the day.  I know you were up all night.”

 

Mulder nodded curtly and got up from his seat, the bundle of red files under his arm.  He walked to the door and then turned back to the section chief. “Sir, if I might ask, what was the purpose in assigning Agent Scully to the Philadelphia case?”

 

“I didn’t assign Agent Scully the case, I simply requested she share her opinion as a trained medical examiner.”

 

“With all due respect, Sir, I think you’re lying.”

 

“Some people flail in the face of opposition, Agent Mulder.  Others flourish.”

 

“Who were you testing?  Me or her?”

 

“Good day, Agent Mulder.  I’ll see you back here in one week.”

 

******


	5. Chapter 5

Mulder did his due diligence and spent the week reviewing the files as Blevins had asked.  The cases intrigued him and he found himself down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of research.  The frustrating thing was knowing he wasn’t able to do anything about cases that were upwards of 60 years old.  They sucked up all his time and energy and he hardly gave a thought to anything else. It was only when his sister called him the night before his meeting with Blevins to remind him that Thanksgiving was two weeks away, that he remembered he had an invitation to think about.  He was so consumed that he hadn’t even gotten around to telling Samantha the latest news yet.

 

“How can she be married?” Samantha asked.

 

“I’m assuming they went to a church, a priest asked do you and do you and he said yes and she said yes, and then they were married.”

 

“You’re hilarious, Fox.”

 

“So, I don’t know what I’ll do.  Maybe I will go, maybe I won’t.”

 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

 

“You’re just saying that because you want me to come to Rhode Island.”

 

“True.  But, I’m also saying it because  _ she’s married _ .”

 

“Maybe I want to meet the guy for myself.”

 

“Bad idea, Fox.”

 

“I’m the king of bad ideas.  But, truthfully, I haven’t even really given it much thought.  I’m absorbed in something for work right now and I haven’t even thought about her.”

 

“If you say so.”

 

“I do say so.  And I have to hang up now because I need to prep for a meeting in the morning.”

 

“Okay, love you.”

 

“You too.”

 

The next morning, Mulder paced the anteroom outside of Blevins’ office, waiting to be seen.  The old secretary gave him the evil eye as she opened mail. Mulder stopped and sat down, thinking that perhaps the woman’s age and size, she just might be capable of stabbing him with her letter opener.  Blevins admitted him a short time later and the first thing Mulder noticed was a TV and VCR on a cart in the corner, making the cramped room even more cramped.

 

“How did you find the x-files, Agent Mulder?”

 

“Fascinating, Sir.  Given the opportunity, I’d like to do more work on-”

 

“I don’t need any speeches,” Blevins interrupted.  “I want to know if you’re interested on working these cases full time.”

 

“What would it entail, exactly?  I don’t even know what the x-files really are.”

 

“What do you think they are?”

 

“Judging by what you gave me, I’d say they are cases with am underlying paranormal element to them, or at the very least, an unexplainable phenomenon or event that warrants investigation.  But, the thing is, no one has done any real investigating. They’ve just provided a record of events without any real attempt at solving anything.”

 

“There is real challenge in trying to solve the unsolvable, isn’t there, Agent Mulder?”

 

“Challenge, yes, but I believe anything is possible with enough diligence.”

 

“Tenacity is exactly what I’m looking for.”

 

The phone on Blevins’ desk buzzed and he picked it up.  “Yes? Yes, send her in.”

 

To Mulder’s surprise, Scully opened the door a few moments later.  There was equal surprise on her face when she saw Mulder, but she quickly looked away and went to shake the section chief’s hand.

 

“Sir,” she said.  “It’s nice to meet you.”

 

“Likewise.  You’re just in time, I was about to brief Agent Mulder on a case assignment.”

 

“Should I wait outside?” she asked, stopping at the second empty chair in the room.

 

“Not at all,” Blevins answered.  “You’ll be on this assignment as well.”

 

Scully raised a brow at Mulder as she sat down.  She’d dressed for the meeting, he could tell, in a navy skirt and blazer.  Her hair was more curled than usual and her makeup was a tad more obvious.

 

Blevins pulled the TV cart out from the corner of the room and turned the TV on.  He took up a remote and then went back to his desk and pressed play on the VCR. “You’re looking at footage of a team of scientists in Alaska working on the Arctic Ice Core Project.  They were sent up there by the government's Advanced Research Project Agency nearly a year ago to drill into the Arctic ice.”

 

On the screen was a staticky image of five men standing a beer keg, holding Dixie cups, raised up as to give a toast.  The man in the middle spoke to the camera. “Team Captain John Richter here,” he said. “It's been a couple of frustrating months, but after a great deal of stick-with-it-ness, we're very proud to report that as of a half-hour ago, we surpassed the previous record for drilling down into an ice sheet.”

 

The men all cheered, and one tossed his ball cap up in the air.  They high-fived each other and shook hands after downing the beer in their Dixie cups.  Blevins paused the videotape.

 

“The samples they removed contained trapped gases, dust, and chemicals,” Blevins said.  “Evidence that could reveal the structure of the earth's climate back to the dawn of man.”

 

“That would be an amazing discovery,” Scully said.

 

“Indeed,” Blevins agreed.  “Their work was a success, nearly completed.  No reports or indications of problems of any kind until roughy a week ago, this next transmission was received.”  He pressed play again and a few seconds later, the screen on the TV went blue, and then the man called Richter appeared again, sitting in front of the camera.  He leaned in close so that his face filled the screen.

 

“November 5th, 1993, I think,” Richter said, breathing hard, in some sort of distress.  His speech was broken into fragments as he took deep breaths between nearly every word. “We're not who we are.  We're not who we are. It goes no further than this. It stops right here, right now.” 

 

Suddenly, Richter was pulled out of the screen by another man, so quickly that it seemed to happen in a blur.  The camera fell over and the screen went blue again.

 

“What happened up there?” Mulder asked.

 

“So far,” Blevins said.  “No one’s been able to reach the compound because of bad weather.”

 

“Is it severe isolation distress?” Scully asked.

 

“These are top geophysicists,” Blevins explained.  “They were trained and screened for this project in every way imaginable, including psychological makeup.  You’ll leave for Nome today.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Scully said.  “Nome? Alaska?”

 

“From there you’ll meet with three other scientists familiar with the project, and then you’ll head north to Icy Cape.  The National Weather Service reports a three-day window to get in and out before the next Arctic storm.”

 

“Guess I need to pack my mittens,” Mulder said.

 

“That’s all,” Blevins said, dismissing them both.  “Mildred has your airline tickets at her desk.”

 

Mulder got up from his seat, followed by Scully.  He held the door open for her and then smoothed his tie down his chest as he cleared his throat to get Mildred’s attention.  Thankfully, the letter opener was no longer in her hand.

 

“You have airline tickets for us?” he asked.

 

Mildred handed them over and Mulder passed them to Scully while flashing the secretary a smile.  Her glare was impenetrable.

 

“Long time, no see,” Mulder said to Scully as they waited for the elevator.

 

“I suppose we’ve both been busy.”

 

“Yeah, there’s...there’s actually something I’ve been working on that I want to tell you about.”

 

Scully nodded, but her focus was on the itinerary in her hand.

 

“What’re you thinking?” he asked.

 

“Alaska?” she answered.  “Now?”

 

“Dress warm.”

 

******

 

Mulder never traveled all that much for work; not by plane, anyway.  He was accustomed to rental cars and the DC Metro area, with occasional forays along the eastern seaboard.  The furthest he’d ever been, for work, was Jacksonville.

 

He arrived at Dulles with only minutes to spare before boarding.  Scully was already at the gate, in the same suit she’d been in during their meeting with Blevins.  He’d changed into jeans, a thermal shirt, and a sweater while he’d gone home to pack.

 

“Hey, Scully,” he said, dropping his bag in the seat next to her.  “Ready to explore The Last Frontier?”

 

“I thought that was space.”

 

“Some nerd you are.  Space is the  _ final _ frontier.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Something wrong?”  He shoved his bag aside and sat down next to her.

 

“Why am I being sent along?”

 

“I imagine it’s because those scientists are presumed dead.”

 

“Why wouldn’t Blevins say that?”

 

“No one ever wants to speak about worst case scenarios.  They just plan for them silently and hope that things turn out okay.”

 

The agent behind the ticket counter announced boarding for their flight and they both stood.  Mulder grabbed his bag. Scully retrieved a small duffel from under her seat. It didn’t look nearly large enough to accommodate winter clothing and all the things women seemed to need when traveling.  Maybe she’d checked a suitcase as well.

 

“You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?”  Scully asked, as they moved into the line with the other passengers checking in.

 

“I found out about it at the same time you did.  What’s your seat assignment?”

 

“10A.”

 

He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice.  “16C. Guess I’ll see you on the other side.”

 

Mulder settled into his aisle seat and did what he always did on airplanes; fiddled with the airflow, tested the overhead light, and rifled through the seatback pocket to see if the magazines were any good.  To his surprise, Scully came down the aisle a few minutes later and stuffed her bag in the overhead bin above him.

 

“I found 16B,” she said.  “We traded.”

 

Mulder stepped out into the aisle to let her pass and then sat down beside her.  She latched her seatbelt right away and then went through the seatback pocket as well.  She moved the vomit bag from the behind the array of safety cards to the front of the pocket.

 

“Someone left a People at my seat,” he offered.

 

“I should warn you, I’m not a great flyer.”  

 

“Okay.”  Samantha wasn’t a great flyer either, but mostly during turbulence and landing.  She once squeezed his hand so fiercely he thought his fingers might break. “Is it something specific?  Take off? Landing? Turbulence?”

 

“Yes.”  She took a deep breath and blew out slowly.  “I took a couple Dramamine after I got here. Hopefully it will help.”

 

Mulder wondered for a moment if she’d sacrificed the comfort of a window seat just to sit with him.  Some people need to be able to see where they’re going to feel more secure. Or maybe sitting with someone she knew was what she needed.

 

“Hey,” he said.  “How’d you get 16B to trade with you?”

 

“I told him we’d been separated by accident and if he wouldn’t mind, could we trade so I could sit with my partner.”

 

_ Partner _ ? He wanted to ask, but didn’t.  The cabin doors closed and no one came to claim the window seat in their row.  If she wanted, she could move over and take it, but she didn’t. She stayed next to him, gripping the armrests with white knuckles when they took off, and then sleeping through meal service and two in flight movies on his shoulder.  She woke slowly, minutes after the captain had announced their descent into Nome. Her head lolled slightly and she rubbed her cheek against his arm. He wanted to brush the hair away from her face, but kept his hand closed into a loose fist in his lap.

 

“Morning, Sunshine,” he whispered to her when she finally stretched and came to.

 

“Where are we?” she asked, groggy, eyelids droopy.

 

“About to land.  You missed the riveting Last Action Hero and the critically acclaimed Free Willy.  I’d like you to know the latter did not in any way tug at my heartstrings and I didn’t cry at all.”

 

Scully smiled slightly with her eyes closed.  Her head slipped to the side again so she was resting against his shoulder, but she wasn’t asleep.  He cautiously put his hand over hers where it lay on the armrest and her fingers twitched gently, but she didn’t move.  They stayed that way until the plane landed, despite the alarm bells going off in Mulder’s head of how wrong it was.

 

******

 

The Nome airport was small and seemed rather desolate.  Outside, Mulder could see the snow on the ground and feel the chill in the air when the cabin door opened.  He pulled his jacket out of his bag and offered it to Scully, but she shook her head and said she’d change in the restroom and just be a few minutes.

 

The fact that she went into the airport restroom in a dress suit and heels, with a small duffel, and came out dressed in leggings, snow boots, a flannel shirt, and oversized white parka, should have probably been in one of the x-files Mulder had read over the week.  All in less than five minutes too. It had to be some sort of world record.

 

“As if you’re not already amazing enough,” Mulder said to himself while Scully was too far off to hear him.

 

“I’m ready,” she said.

 

“Yeah, I’ll say.”  He didn’t even ask how she accomplished such a feat.  Some mysteries should probably remain unsolved.

 

They were directed to a hangar on the grounds of the airport to meet the remainder of their team and wait for their connecting flight.  Two men and a woman, dressed warmly and with duffel bags of their own, were already in the hangar. They introduced themselves as Murphy, Hodge, and DaSilva; a geologist, a physician, and a toxicologist, respectively.  A tall, burly man with dark curly hair came towards them and announced that he was their pilot and his name was Bear. The name suited him. Mulder saw Scully pale a bit at the sight of the single engine plane that was going to take them to Icy Cape.  He put his hand on her back in support.

 

It was about an hour’s ride to the bunker where the ice core project made their camp.  It was a bumpy ride, and Mulder kept close to Scully. She looked a little green during some of the more harrowing dips the plane took, but she bore it stoically and quietly.  He noticed she was a bit shaky once her feet were on solid ground.

 

The landing strip was a short, five-minute walk to the entrance of the bunker.  The team, including the pilot, lugged their gear across the snowy terrain. The door was stuck, iced at the seams, and it took two of them, Mulder and Hodge, to push it open.  Six flashlights shined in unison into the dark room and they were greeted by the sight of two dead men on the ground, guns beside them. Mulder recognized one of them as the project leader from the tape, the man named Richter.

 

Scully pushed past Mulder and entered the interior chamber where the bodies lay.  Her work there had begun the minute the door opened.

 

“Before anyone touches anything, we need to document the scene,” she said, crouching next to Richter’s body.  “There’s a camera in my bag. Mulder, could you get that please. Someone try to find a way to turn the power back on.”

 

“Anything to get out of here,” Murphy, the geologist said, and turned to leave.  He was tall, thin, and Mulder had him pegged as a nervous, anxious type.

 

“There are body bags on the plane,” Bear said.

 

“What should we do?” DaSilva asked.  She was the toxicologist. Her blonde hair was tucked under a ski cap and she clapped her gloved hands together.

 

“Start taking pictures,” Scully answered, nodding towards her when Mulder went to hand over the camera he’d dug out of her bag.  

 

A loud bang sounded from outside and then a light bulb suspended from the ceiling by a long electrical cord flickered on, casting a dull orange glow.  Murphy came back and lingered in the doorway. Hodge kept waving his flashlight around the room. He landed on a cluster of barrels labeled Ice Cores 3,175 - 3,260.

 

“That’s what they were drilling for,” Mulder said.

 

“I need to preserve some samples,” Murphy said, pushing past Hodge to get to the barrels.  Obviously, the work excited him and made him forget about the bodies.

 

Before he could get too far, Mulder heard a low growl and he threw his arm out, stopping Murphy from passing.  “Wait,” he said.

 

A dog, fur standing at attention and back arched in a threatening pose, slunk into the room, teeth bared.  Murphy yelped and then jumped back. The dog lunged and hit Mulder in the chest, knocking him back.

 

“Hey!” Bear yelled, kicking the dog off of Mulder.  The dog lunged at Bear and bit his hand. Bear screamed.

 

Mulder yanked his jacket off and threw it over the dog’s head, subduing him.  Hodge came running towards them with a hypodermic needle in his hand and plunged it into the dog’s nape.  The dog yelped, whimpered, kicked his legs, and then went still.

 

“Are you okay?” Scully asked, cupping Mulder’s elbow.

 

“I’m fine.”  He nodded towards Bear.  “His hand is bleeding.”

 

“Is he rabid?” Murphy asked.  “What if there are more rabid dogs here?”

 

Hodge, who was examining the dog, shook his head.  “I don’t see any indication of glottal spasm or tetany.  If it is rabies, it's certainly not a strain I'm familiar with.”

 

“Look at that,” Scully pointed to bottom of the dog’s paws.  “Black nodules.”

 

“And swollen lymph nodes,” Hodge added.

 

“Those are symptoms of the bubonic plague,” Mulder said.

 

“The plague!” Murphy cried.

 

“Now, calm down,” Mulder told him.

 

Hodge stood and brushed his knees with both hands.  “I’ll do a blood test. That’ll tell us more.”

 

“The dog’s got a skin irritation on his neck,” Mulder said.  “Looks like he’s been scratching out his own hair.”

 

“What the hell is that?” DaSilva said, pointing to the dog’s neck.

 

Underneath the skin where the dog has scratched himself, a bump rippled over his vertebrae.  The bump receded and then rippled again.

 

The small group, minus Bear who was sitting against the wall and clutching his hand to his chest, stood over the dog, puzzled and concerned.

 

******

 

Mulder and Hodge, on Scully’s orders, moved the two bodies from the interior chamber to the main laboratory, where the found the bodies of the remaining members of the ice core project.  She set up a makeshift autopsy table and went to work. Each member of their little team went off to perform their own specialties. Murphy started analyzing the ice core samples. Hodge examined the bloodwork of the dog.  DaSilva checked for the presence of toxins. Mulder helped Bear wrap his bleeding hand and then went poking around into areas he had no business in, that was his specialty, after all. The only noteworthy thing he found was on a bathroom mirror, written in black marker: WE ARE NOT WHO WE ARE.

 

“Find anything,” he asked Scully when she came out of the curtained area she’d commandeered for herself to do the autopsies.  

 

“From the autopsies, it's clear that these men killed each other,” she answered, peeling off her gloves.  “There are contusions around the throat areas of three men, evidence of strangulation. Richter and Campbell killed themselves.  I also found tissue damage due to fever.”

 

“Did any of them have black spots like the dog?” Murphy asked.

 

“No.  None of them had the black nodules.”

 

“Then those spots didn’t have anything to do with those guys killing each other?” Bear asked.  He sat in the corner of the room, sweaty and pale. He looked like he might be sick.

 

“I wouldn't rule it out,” Hodge replied, pushing past a set of plastic flaps that separated one part of the lab from the other.  “I just reexamined the dog. The nodules are gone.”

 

“What does that mean?” Mulder asked.

 

“Well, it could mean that the spots are a symptom of some disease at an early stage.”

 

“There’s one other thing that should be noted,” Scully said.  “Hodge, you might want to take a look at it.”

 

“What?” he asked.

 

“There seems to be a presence of ammonium hydroxide in Richter's blood sample.”

 

“That’s impossible.  Ammonia would vaporize at human body temperature.”

 

“I’ve analyzed two samples already.”

 

Hodge narrowed his eyes and followed Scully to a worktable with a high-powered microscope on it.  DaSilva emerged from the hall that led to the sleeping quarters, followed by Murphy.

 

“I didn’t find any evidence of toxins in the air filtration systems,” she announced.

 

“But, I did,” Murphy countered.  “In the ice. I found a high ratio of ammonia to water in the ice core.  The earth's atmosphere could never have produced such high levels, not even a quarter of a million years ago.”

 

“Not unless a foreign object was introduced into that environment,” Scully said.

 

Murphy nodded and asked to take over the microscope.  He exchanged the slide that Scully and Hodge were analyzing for one of his own, made some adjustments to the focus, and then offered the lens back to Scully.  She peered into it and then looked up like she was startled.

 

“Tell me that’s not a foreign object,” Murphy said.

 

Hodge took a look after Scully and then Mulder had his turn.  To him, it looked like some sort of worm was wiggling around on the slide, flipping its tail back and forth.  He moved away so DaSilva could look as well.

 

“That same thing is in Richter’s blood,” Scully said, she walked around the table as though she was talking a theory out to herself.  “What if that single-celled organism is the larval stage of a larger animal?”

 

“Kind of a leap, don’t you think?” Hodge said, taking another turn at the microscope.

 

“The evidence is right there,” she argued, pointing at the slides on the table.

 

“Maybe the organism in the ice core somehow got into the men,” Murphy offered.

 

“Come on,” DaSilva scoffed.  “Nothing can survive subzero temperatures for a quarter of a million years.”

 

“That we know of,” Scully said, looking at Mulder, who nodded.

 

“Unless that’s how it lives,” he said.

 

Bear stumbled to his feet, interrupting the pow-wow over the worm.  “Look here,” he grumbled. “I don't see why you're squabbling over some bug.  You said it yourself, Scully, those men killed each other. That's it. You all found what you came for, now let's just get the hell out of here.”

 

“I agree.”  Hodge nodded.  “We can have the bodies sent to a facility where they can make a definitive diagnosis in the event that something was missed, Agent Scully.”

 

Mulder saw Scully bristle.  She crossed her arms over her chest and stared up into Hodge’s face.  “If those bodies are infected with an unknown organism, we can't remove them,  _ Doctor _ Hodge,” she said.  “We can't go back without proper quarantine procedures.  We can't risk bringing back the next plague.”

 

“Let's say you're right,” Bear interjected, wiping sweat off his brow.  “They came down with something. We haven't, and I ain't waiting around until we do.”

 

“I think it's perfectly safe to go back,” Hodge added.  “We've taken all the necessary biological safeguards. There’s no reason to suspect we’re infected.”

 

“But, the dog bit Bear,” Murphy pointed out.

 

“It jumped on Mulder too!” Bear yelled.

 

“It didn’t break the skin,” Mulder argued.

 

Bear snarled and took a few aggressive steps towards Mulder, but both Hodge and Scully intervened and pushed him back.

 

“Listen,” Scully said, holding her arms out as though refereeing both sides of the room.  “There's only one way to proceed, here. We have to eliminate every possibility and determine if any of us is infected.”

 

“Parasitic diagnostic procedure requires that each of us provide a blood and a stool sample,” Hodge told her, raising his brows.

 

Not to be deterred, Scully went over to a shelf in the lab and came back with an armful of sterile jars.  She placed them down on the table and glared at Hodge, almost daring him to challenge her.

 

“Anyone got the morning sports section?” Mulder asked, attempting the break the tension in the room.  He grabbed one of the jars and nodded to Hodge.

 

“I ain’t dropping my cargo for no one,” Bear growled, swiping up one of the jars and hurling it at the wall where it shattered on impact.

 

Both Murphy and DaSilva jumped and yelped.

 

“What I'm doing is getting my gear, getting my plane and flying the hell out of here.”

 

“You can’t do that,” Mulder said.  “The dog bit you.”

 

“I got hired to fly you up here and fly you back.  No one said this might be part of the deal. So, the deal is over.”

 

Bear stormed off to the sleeping quarters, where they’d all found a place to put their things.  Scully moved to go after him, but Mulder put a hand on her shoulder and held her back. He was fairly certain Bear was sick, if not infected.  There was no telling what he might do.

 

“We can't let him leave without being checked,” Scully said, shrugging Mulder’s hand off her shoulder.

 

“Who’s going to stop him?” Murphy asked.

 

“We have to,” Scully argued.  “We can’t risk infecting the population.”

 

“If he gets on that plane, I’m going with him,” DaSilva said.

 

“We don’t have time to argue about this!” Scully hissed.  “You want a majority rule on this? Fine, let’s take a vote.  Whoever thinks we should confine Bear until he’s been examined, raise your hand.”

 

Murphy’s hand was the first one to shoot up in the air, followed by Scully.  She looked at Mulder with a tight expression on her face, one that said, ‘if you don’t raise your hand, I will not hesitate to kill you,’ so he slowly put his hand in the air as well.  Hodge sighed and then raised his hand. The only hold out was DaSilva.

 

“I guess that takes care of that,” Mulder said.  He removed his weapon from his holster and flipped the safety off.  Beside him, Scully did the same.

 

Bear stomped into the lab dragging a black bag with him and his coat over his arm.  Scully trained her gun at him and he snorted.

 

“Bear,” Mulder said, using the even tone he’d been taught in hostage negotiation tactics.  “We just want to check you out. If we don’t find any trace of a parasite or virus, we’ll let you go.  We’ll all go.”

 

“Gimme the damn jar,” Bear growled.

 

Mulder holstered his gun and picked up one the jars.  He handed it to Bear who stared at it for a few moments and then without warning, smashed it into Mulder’s head.  Mulder groaned, but he instinctively brought the flat of his hand up into Bear’s nose. Bear yelled and stumbled back, giving Mulder the time and advantage he needed.  He grabbed his arm, twisted it back behind him, and slammed Bear’s head down onto the worktable. He had a strong grip on Bear’s wrist and thumb, so that when he tried to wrestle free, his arm and hand bent back in opposing directions, maximizing his pain.

 

“Handcuffs would be nice right now,” Mulder complained.  His temple throbbed where Bear had hit him.

 

“I have rope,” Scully announced.

 

As she worked to secure Bear’s hands, DaSilva stepped up next to Mulder and gasped.  “Oh my god!” she cried. Mulder looked at the back of Bear’s neck where the skin rippled just like the dog’s had.

 

“Get my bag!” Hodge cried, pressing his hand down on Bear’s neck just below the ripple.

 

“What’re you doing?” Mulder yelled.

 

“I’m gonna cut it out!”

 

“We don’t know enough about it!”

 

“It’s killing him!  Help me!”

 

Scully had grabbed a pair of gloves in the pandemonium, and she leaned over Mulder’s arm and hold the skin on Bear’s neck taut.  Hodge grabbed a scalpel from the bag DaSilva brought him and began to slice through the skin. Mulder turned his head, gagging a little.  Beneath him, Bear was screaming and spasming.

 

“Forceps!” Hodge yelled.

 

When Mulder turned to look again, Hodge was slowly easing a worm-like creature from the back of Bear’s neck.  The worm writhed, pinched in the beak of the forceps, and splattered Bear’s neck with drops of black liquid.

 

“Hold still, Bear,” Mulder said.  “You’re gonna be okay.”

 

DaSilva pushed a jar into the foray and Hodge dropped the worm inside, sealing it quickly.  Bear stopped squirming and let out a sigh akin to relief, and then went limp on the table. He’d passed out.

 

******

 

The CB radio in the bunker was at a little station off the side of the laboratory.  Mulder flipped it on and sent out a distress call. “This is the AICP Investigative Team calling Doolittle Airfield,” he said.  “Come in, Doolittle Airfield.”

 

“DAF responding,” came the reply.

 

“This is Agent Mulder, we have a serious biological hazard on our hands.  Request air pick-up and quarantine procedures, over.” The radio replied with static, and Mulder tried again.  “Come in, Doolittle Airfield.”

 

“We copy, Agent Mulder.  Your area is under a heavy storm and no aircraft can get out until the next day.  Maybe the military base in Kotzebue can set up a quarantine. Advise immediate evacuation, the Arctic storm is bearing in your direction, over.”

 

“We were told we would have three clear days of weather, over.”

 

“Welcome to the top of the world, Agent Mulder.  Over.”

 

Mulder tipped the microphone over onto the table in frustration.  He laced his fingers together and brought them to the back of his head.  His temple throbbed endlessly. He pushed out of his chair and went back into the lab.

 

“Is Bear in any condition to fly?” he asked.  “If we don’t get out of here within an hour, we won’t be getting out for days.”

 

Scully looked down at her gloved hands.  They were covered in blood. Hodge turned away.

 

“Bear’s dead,” Scully said.

 

******

 

Scully and Hodge spent the next hour studying the worm while Mulder, with the assistance of both squeamish and jittery Murphy and DaSilva, moved the bodies of the research team, and Bear, into the frigid interior chamber.  It was difficult and laborious and it made Mulder’s head hurt even more. Hodge and Scully sat at the worktable comparing notes when the last body bag had been laid out.

 

“Well,” Hodge explained.  “It's similar to a tapeworm in that it has a scolex with suckers and hooks.”

 

“It’s a tapeworm?” Murphy asked.  “Then you know what to do about it.”

 

“I said similar to a tapeworm.  But, also, very different from any organism that I know of.”

 

“Have you figured out how it’s transmitted yet?” Mulder asked.

 

“Exchange of fluids, touch, air, all of the above?  I don't know.” Hodge shrugged.

 

Scully slid a jar across the table.  “All of the other dead bodies had the creature,” she said.  “This is the only one that's still alive.”

 

“Were they all in the spine?” Mulder asked.

 

“No.  It appears that they were in the hypothalamus gland deep in the brain.”

 

Murphy closed his eyes.  “Hypothalamus? That’s the…”

 

“It's a gland that secretes hormones,” Hodge supplied.  “I don't know why a parasite would want to attach to it.”

 

“The hypothalamus releases acetylcholine, which produces violent, aggressive behavior,” Scully theorized.  She paused for a moment and then nodded to herself. “That might be the connection. Everybody that's been infected certainly seems to act aggressively.  Maybe the worm feeds on the acetylcholine which floods our capacity to control violent behavior.”

 

“A parasite shouldn’t want to kill its host,” Mulder said.

 

“It doesn't kill you until it's extracted,” Hodge said.  “Then it releases a poison.”

 

“You're saying it's possible that the worm makes you want to kill other people, which is maybe what happened to the first team.”

 

“What if it happens to us?” DaSilva asked.

 

Hodge put up his hands to alleviate any worries.  “This is just a theory. We don’t have any definitive proof of anything.”

 

“Except five dead men,” Murphy reminded them.

 

“But,” Hodge countered at Scully.  “If the worm makes people violently aggressive, why did Richter and the other guy we found in the chamber-”

 

“Campbell,” Scully supplied, tiredly rubbing her forehead.

 

“Why did they kill themselves?”

 

“Maybe they did it to save us,” Mulder said.

 

No one responded.  They all looked around at each other in awkward silence.

 

“Why don’t we get some sleep,” Mulder suggested.  “I think we’re all a little wired and hypersensitive.  We can get a fresh start in the morning.”

 

“I need to check the bodies,” Scully said.  “Maybe I missed something.”

 

******

 

Mulder waited until the rest of the group had gone to bed to join Scully in the chamber.  She was bent over the unzipped body bag that Bear had been placed in, cheeks ruddy from the cold.  He crouched down next to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

 

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Scully?”

 

“I’m too tired to sleep, Mulder.”

 

“You should try.  It’ll do you good.”

 

“I don’t want to waste a second trying to figure out what this thing is.”

 

“Look, I want to kill it too-”

 

“I don’t want to kill it.”  She looked up at him and cocked her head.  “I want to study it.”

 

“But…”

 

“Mulder, this area of the ice sheet was formed over a meteor crater.  The thing, whatever it is, lived in ammonia. It survived sub-zero temperatures.  Theorists in alternative life-designs believe in ammonia-supported life systems on planets with freezing temperatures.”

 

“Are you telling me you think that thing is some kind of alien?”  Mulder nearly chuckled, but her face was stony and serious.

 

“I’m saying that the meteor that crashed here a quarter of a million years ago may have carried that type of life to Earth.”

 

“Scully, Bear developed surface symptoms within a few minutes.  I saw him change. He was sweaty and agitated. He looked flu-like.  Within a few hours, that parasite had total control. What would happen if this got into the population?  A city the size of New York could be infected within a few days.”

 

“Exactly.  But what do we know about it?  This organism might be lying dormant in another crater.  We need to study it, to find out how it works, so we know how to deal with it in the future, if another one surfaces.”

 

“I don’t want to run the risk of ending up like Richter and Campbell.  Do you?”

 

“No.”  She lowered her eyes and gave her head a few shakes from side to side.

 

“I think we need to take those bodies, worms and all, and incinerate them.”

 

“Mulder, you told me you believed that a scientist persists, and that’s why new discoveries are made every day.  You even told me you thought I could be the one to make such a discovery.”

 

“Yeah, but I wasn’t…”

 

“You don’t believe that?  Or you were just telling me something you thought I wanted to hear?”

 

“I do believe it.  I just think this might be a little more dangerous than...than...I don’t know what.  I don’t want you to get hurt. I mean, I don’t want any of us to get hurt.”

 

Scully got to her feet and stared down at Mulder.  “Don’t patronize me, Agent Mulder,” she spat.

 

“Hey!”  Mulder jumped up and followed at her heels into the laboratory.  He stopped short when Hodge and DaSilva blocked their way. Both had their arms crossed like disappointed parents.

 

“You okay, Agent Scully?” DaSilva asked.  “You seem a bit stressed.”

 

“I’m fi...just what the hell are you implying?”

 

“Everybody calm down,” Mulder urged.  “We’re all tired and scared, but that’s no reason to turn on one another.”

 

“She got Bear’s blood on her,” DaSilva accused.

 

“We all just need to get some sleep,” Mulder said.

 

“You kidding?” Hodge scoffed.  “You think any of us could sleep right now?  Let's face it, we've got to check for spots. Any person or persons who has them should be confined.  Are we agreed on that?”

 

“Are you doing the exams?” DaSilva asked.

 

“No,” Scully said, sharply.  “We do them on each other.

 

******

 

“Before anyone passes judgement, may I remind you we are in the Arctic,” Mulder told Hodge and Murphy as he undid his belt.  Getting naked in front of two strange men was not high on his list of things to do, but for the threat of biological contamination, he’d do what he had to do.  Hodge examined both Mulder and Murphy and Mulder examined Hodge. They did not find any evidence of black spots or ripples under their skin.

 

Throughout the process, Mulder was less concerned for himself than he was for Scully.  In case either Murphy or Hodge had turned out to be infected, he had backup in the whoever wasn’t contaminated, but Scully only had herself.  He waited for the results of their examinations rather impatiently, trying not to let his level of agitation show.

 

When they all came back clear, the team seemed to noticeably relax a bit and agreed that they should head to bed.  The rooms Mulder and Scully had dropped their bags in were across from one another. Mulder held her back a little as they all shuffled off to the sleeping quarters and stood next to her door as she opened it.

 

“Hey,” he said, quietly.  “If you thought I was implying that you couldn’t take care of yourself earlier, it isn’t what I meant.”

 

“I know that.  I apologize for snapping, I’m just…”

 

“On a short fuse right now.  I think we all are.”

 

“Yeah.”  She nodded.

 

“Well,” he said, crossing the hall to his own door.  “If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

 

“Good night, Mulder.”

 

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” he said, wryly.

 

“Mulder,” she said, waiting until he’d turned back to look at her.  “Don’t forget, the spots on the dog went away.”

 

He nodded, but the warning was clear.  No one was out of the woods yet. He closed the door softly behind him and then leaned against it for a long time before he crawled into bed.

 

******

 

Mulder woke with a start, his eyes flying open to the shadows on the ceiling.  The desk lamp he’d left on still glowed. His gun was still on the table where he left it.  He heard a noise, like the sound of a door closing, and he swung his legs out of bed and searched the floor for his shoes.  It was probably nothing, maybe one of the others using the facilities, but he decided to check it out anyway. He was down to his thermal shirt and jeans, but he was warm from sleep and didn’t bother with his sweater.

 

Slowly, Mulder crept down the hall, his gun at his hip and flashlight guiding the way.  He saw that Murphy’s door was open, but the rest were closed. As he passed by, he shined the light inside the room, but it was empty.  The lights in the lab were still on so he tucked his flashlight in his pocket and looked around. The infected dog, having been confined to a kennel after being subdued and examined, was now awake, growling low in the corner.  He hears something, like a leaky faucet, and he looks around for the source.

 

Beneath the large, walk-in freezer, something dripped steadily into a small puddle on the floor.  Mulder eyed the dark liquid with trepidation and then opened the freezer. Murphy’s body, throat slashed and still oozing blood, fell out onto him.  He yelped and lowered the body to the ground, just as Scully, Hodge and DaSilva ran in.

 

“Mulder!” Scully cried.  “What are you doing?”

 

“Murphy’s dead,” he said, nodding down at the body in his arms.

 

“You killed him?” Hodge accused.

 

“I found him like this!  I heard a door close and I came out to check.  It’s one of you.”

 

“You’re lying,” DaSilva said.  

 

“He could’ve done it and not even known,” Hodge said.

 

“No, he said he didn’t do it,” Scully defended.

 

“I don’t have any of the symptoms,” Mulder added.

 

“You examined him yourself, Hodge,” Scully reminded.

 

Hodge scoffed.  “Six hours ago.”

 

“It was one of you!”  Exhausted and angry at the accusations being thrown at him, Mulder jumped to his feet and took a few steps at Hodge, whipping his gun out and pointing it at him.  Scully intervened so that she was standing between the two men.

 

“Stop it!” she yelled.  “Stop it right now. Mulder, put the gun down and let Hodge give you a blood test.”

 

“So he could doctor the results?  I’m not letting him near me with a needle, he could be infected!”

 

“He has to be confined, right now,” Hodge ordered.

 

“Turn around and let us look at your neck,” Scully said.

 

All this time he’d thought Scully was the only one he trusted, but she was siding with Hodge and DaSilva.  It was disappointing and his feelings were hurt. He waved his gun and shook his head. 

 

“I'm not turning my back on anyone!  As far as I'm concerned, you're all infected!”

 

“Hodge is right,” DaSilva said.  “We need to lock him up.”

 

While Mulder was distracted by glaring at DaSilva, Hodge had grabbed a crowbar from the worktable and lunged and Mulder.  Mulder jumped back and aimed his gun at Hodge. Scully pulled her gun out and aimed it at Mulder, much to his shock and dismay.

 

“Mulder!” she yelled.

 

“Scully, get that gun off me!”

 

“Listen to me,” she pleaded.

 

“Put it down!”

 

“You put it down first!”

 

“Scully, for god’s sake it’s me!”

 

“You may not be who you are.”  She begged him with her eyes to lower his weapon.

 

It was a struggle, and he broke into a sweat fighting his impulses, but he put his arm down and turned his weapon over to Scully, holding the butt out to her.  She holstered it and kept her own aimed at him.

 

“The storage room,” Hodge said.

 

“Come on.”  Scully nodded, moving forwards while Mulder moved backwards towards the little room off the side of the lab.  He was still not about to turn his back on any of them.

 

DaSilva ran ahead and opened the sliding door to the room.  Mulder shifted his body to a bit of an angle so he could see every one of them as he backed into the room.  He pulled the string for the overhead light bulb and it swayed above him. He caught Scully’s gaze and held it.

 

“In here,” he said.  “I’ll be safer than you.”

 

Someone slid the door shut between them and he heard them drop the bolt in the lock.  Scully still hadn’t lowered her gun. It was devastating.

 

******

 

Hours passed.  Exactly how long, Mulder wasn’t sure.  At a certain point, he’d turned off the light and sat in the dark, sulking and brooding.  His initial anger became sadness, and he’d even shed a few tears, which then turned to frustration and back to anger.  By the time the door slid open again, he was feeling resigned and woozy. He scrambled to his feet and squinted in the sudden flood of light that illuminated the small storage room.

 

He was alone with Scully, and if things weren’t so tense and awkward, he might be inclined to believe he’d fallen asleep and was dreaming.  His situation wasn’t a dream, however, it was a damn nightmare.

 

“It’s just you?” Mulder asked, eyes not quite fully adjusted. 

 

“It’s just me.”

 

“It’s one of them,” he insisted.

 

Scully stood at least two feet away from him, her body perpendicular to his.  She only looked at him sideways with her head down. He could see her chest rising and falling with the rapid breath of fear, though she was trying to hide it.  It made him feel both smug and irritated. She should be afraid, but not of him. He stepped closer to her and she flinched and leaned away.

 

“Mulder, no one’s been killed since you’ve been in here.”

 

“So?”

 

“We’ve found a way to kill it.  Two worms in one host will kill each other.”

 

“You give me one worm, you’ll kill me!” he snarled, leaning down into her face.

 

She swallowed.  He could practically hear her heart thumping against her chest.  She smelled of lingering perfume and anxiety. Her eyes darted around the floor below her, but never bounced to Mulder.

 

“Okay,” she whispered.  “If that’s true, why wouldn’t you let us inspect you?”

 

“I would have, but you pulled a gun on me,” he whispered back, through gritted teeth.  “I don’t trust  _ them _ .  I want to trust  _ you _ .”

 

“They’re not in here right now.   
  


Mulder stared into Scully’s face until she turned her eyes towards him, head still bent.  He straightened and turned his back to her, pulling his collar down to his shoulders, presenting her with his neck.  It took a few moments, but he felt her move close. He could feel her breath on his skin and it stirred his gut and his groin.  Then, her hand passed across the expanse between his shoulder blades and the breath went out of him. Her hand was warm and soft, moving down his spine and up to his nape in a slow caress.  He wanted to push her up against the boxes in the corner and drive the anxiety out of her until she proclaimed her loyalty to him and only him.

 

He should’ve been ashamed of himself just then, but he wasn’t.  He was still angry, but he was also aroused. He only hated her because he loved her.  It was wrong, he knew it was wrong to want her, but he couldn’t help it. If her hand continued to sweep across his back so softly, he just might forget that she was married.

 

She stopped though, and gave a nervous laugh.  Her head bowed and bumped his back softly. He stood completely still while her hands dropped to his hips.

 

“You’re fine,” she murmured, to him or to herself, he wasn’t sure.  And then she let go.

 

The loss of her body heat hit him in the gut.  He whipped around, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her back to him.  She tried to turn her head to look at him, but he touched the side of her face and gently turned it back.  He pulled softly at the collar of her flannel shirt, exposing the top of her back and neck to his greedy hands.

 

He brushed her hair up and out of his way and his let his fingers trail through the soft curls at the back of her neck.  He palmed her nape and swept his thumb from side to side across her vertebrae. He wanted to kiss each and every bump of her spine from neck to tailbone.  She breathed deeply and sighed.

 

“You’re fine,” he said.

 

“Mulder,” she whispered.

 

He raised her collar up and lightly rested his hands on her shoulders.  “It’s one of them.”

 

“Stay behind me.  Let me do the talking.”

 

The anger he’d had evaporated.  Deep down, he’d known all along that she was protecting him, and putting herself in danger to do it.  Now, she wanted to lead a possible battle. It made him want to pull her back to him again and wrap his arms around her.  It made him want to press his face into her neck and not come up for air until he had to.

 

“Ready?” she asked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Scully hesitated and then stepped to the door.  She gave two swift bangs and then it slid open. DaSilva and Hodge both backed up as Mulder and Scully walked out.

 

“I’ve examined him,” Scully said.  “He’s not infected.”

 

“Neither is she,” Mulder added.

 

“Which means it must be one of you.”

 

“Okay,” Hodge said.  “But, I still want to check him out myself, and then he can examine both of us.”

 

Mulder nodded once.  The next few seconds happened in a blur.  Hodge lunged at him and knocked him into a stack of boxes.  DaSilva rushed at Scully and shoved her back into the storage room and locked the door.  Mulder fought back at Hodge, wrestling him across the floor. They traded the upperhand multiple times, slamming into equipment, knocking things off shelves.

 

Hodge had Mulder pinned, his forearm across his neck, while Mulder kicked to free himself.  DaSilva rushed over with the forceps, the worm dangling ominously from between the pinchers.

 

“No!” Mulder yelled.

 

“Do it!” Hodge ordered.

 

Mulder saw the worm come down towards his ear.  He screamed and bucked, but Hodge had him locked down tight.  Suddenly, his grip went slack and he shoved DaSilva to the side.  Mulder rolled out from under him and skittered back.

 

“Mulder, it’s her!” Hodge yelled.

 

DaSilva seemed to make a break with sanity at that point.  She screamed high and long, darting around the room and shoving things off the table, breaking glasses, pulling down shelves.  Hodge ran to the storage room door to let Scully out and Mulder retrieved the forceps with the worm still held in its grip.

 

“It’s her,” Hodge told Scully.  “It’s DaSilva.”

 

DaSilva managed to find a gun in the chaos and waved it around the room, screaming hysterically.  She fired off a shot that one of the glass cases of equipment and shattered it. Hodge, Mulder, and Scully ducked.

 

“Take this,” Mulder said, handing Hodge the forceps.  “On my go.”

 

“Be careful,” Scully told him.

 

Mulder jumped up and DaSilva spun around with the gun extended.  Before she fired a second shot that hit the ceiling, Mulder tackled her to the ground, knocking the gun out of her hand.  She screamed in his face and it felt like his eardrum might burst. Scully was suddenly there on the other side, holding DaSilva down where Mulder couldn’t.  Hodge hovered over them and dropped the worm into her ear. She arched up off the ground, the tendons in her neck bursting and pulsing, face red. And then she went limp and whimpered.

 

“You’re okay,” Scully whispered, soothingly.  “You’re okay.”

 

******

 

The storm that was supposed to blow through the area fizzled out, and a rescue plane touched down mere hours after DaSilva had been subdued.  They’d moved her to the sleeping quarters where Hodge kept watch over her until paramedics took over and loaded her into the plane. They’d all been hustled as quickly as possible out of the facility and back to Nome, where they waited for flights home.

 

“She's being put in quarantine along with the dog,” Hodge said, as they watched DaSilva being loaded into a containment unit.  “We'll keep her there until we're sure she won't infect the rest of the population.”

 

“We should go back,” Mulder said.  “If we had the proper equipment, knowing what we know now, we could poss-”

 

“Don’t you know?” Hodge interrupted.

 

“Know what?”

 

“45 minutes after they evacuated us, they torched the place.  There's nothing left.”

 

Mulder looked to Scully who had her brow furrowed.  “Who did that?” she asked.

 

“Military, CDC, you’d know better than I would.  They’re your people.” Hodge shrugged and then squinted up at the sunlight breaking through the clouds.  He slung his bag over his shoulder and then walked away without a goodbye.

 

“It’s still there, Mulder,” Scully said, looking up at him.  “200,000 years down in the ice.”

 

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

 

She inhaled swiftly through her nose and then reached down to pick up the bag at her feet.  “Leave it,” she said.

 

He nodded in agreement, though if she’d said she wanted to drill, he’d grab a shovel and do it himself if he had to.

 

******

 

The flight home wasn’t even half-full.  Actually, it was a flight to Vancouver, and then on to DC, but the handful of passengers who’d deplaned in British Columbia, were replaced with a handful of passengers headed to DC.  Seeing as how they had their pick of seats, Mulder waited until everyone had boarded to head down the aisle to Scully’s row.

 

“Excuse me,” he told the woman seated in the aisle seat.  “There was a mistake when our tickets were issued. Would you mind if I sat with my partner?”

 

“Oh, no, of course not,” said the woman.  She unhooked her seatbelt and smiled at Mulder and then at Scully as she got up.

 

“Do you have a bag?” he asked.  “I’d be happy to move it for you.”

 

“Oh, aren’t you sweet.  Yes, the blue one.”

 

Mulder took the woman’s bag from the overhead bin and walked it down to the bin above his old seat.  He traded her bag for his and then went back down to Scully. She watched him with a half-lidded gaze.  Instead of stretching out in his aisle seat, he sat in the middle, next to her.

 

“Did you take your Dramamine?” he asked her.

 

“Yep.”

 

“I heard the stewardess tell someone one of the inflight movies is going to be Groundhog Day.  You’re gonna miss it.”

 

“I’ll live.”

 

“I’ll give you a summary when we land.”

 

Scully yawned and nodded.  She had her head leaned against the wall next to the window, but she shifted in her seat and rested it on Mulder’s shoulder instead.

 

“Is this okay?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know, Scully.  You tell me.”

 

She was quiet for a few moments.  “Have you thought about where you’ll go for Thanksgiving?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Have you made a decision.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Are you gonna tell me what it is?”  She yawned again and her eyes closed.

 

“I’ll come.”

 

“You will?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I’m glad.  I’ll…” she paused to yawn and stretched against his arm.  “I’ll send the time and place to your email address.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“For what?”

 

She yawned again and didn’t answer.  Minutes later, she was asleep. This time, she missed Groundhog Day and Benny & Joon.  Mulder thought both of them were terrible.

 

******


	6. Chapter 6

Samantha was disappointed with Mulder, but more than that, she thought he was crazy.  He knew that, because she flat out told him so.

 

“You’re crazy!” she said.  “Or masochistic.”

 

“Or both,” he answered.

 

“Why on earth would you want to put yourself through it?”

 

“Either option is torture, if you think about it.”

 

“So, it’s masochism then?

 

“It’s…”

 

“Fox, do you remember after ‘The Incident,’ when-”

 

“I don’t want to think about that, Sam.”

 

“It happened to  _ me _ , not you, Fox.  But, you acted like...like the suffering was yours alone.”

 

“It was my fault.  If I had been taking better-”

 

“Shut up.  We both know that’s not true.  What happened, happened. You were a child as much as I was, and it wasn’t your fault.  But, oh, how you suffered.”

 

Agitated, Mulder began to pace his apartment, dragging the phone with him from room to room as long as the cord would extend.  “What does that even have to do with anything? Why bring it up now?”

 

“Because it’s like it’s in your nature to suffer, to punish yourself for things you have no control over.  This woman is married, and there’s nothing you can do about that, so you’d rather suffer than move on.”

 

“I have moved on,” he lied.

 

“Who do you think you’re talking to, Fox?”

 

“Certainly not a licensed psychologist, oh wait, that’s me.”

 

“Doctors make the worst patients.”

 

“Okay, Samantha Freud, let’s just say there’s a hint of truth in your armchair psychologist analysis.  Wouldn’t I need closure of some kind?”

 

“You’ll never get closure.”

 

“Why do you say that?”

 

“Because you’ll just continue to work with her like everything’s fine.”

 

“It is fine.  It’s peachy friggin’ keen.”

 

“Right.”

 

“I just need to see the guy for myself.  I need to know what...I don’t know what I need to know, but I need to know.”

 

“You want to know what you’re up against.”

 

“I’m not...this isn’t...it’s not like I’m going to slap him in the face with a leather glove and challenge him to a duel.”

 

“Oh, but I’m sure you’d like to.”

 

“Well...dammit, yes!”  Mulder felt like punching his wall, but he’d wandered into the kitchen, which was made of brick, and that would hurt too much.

 

“For the record, I think it’s a bad idea.”

 

“Noted.”

 

“But, you’re going to go there anyway, aren’t you?”

 

“I already said yes.”

 

“You could say no.”

 

“Well, that would be very rude.”

 

“Can you hear me rolling my eyes right now?  I hope you can.”

 

“No, but I can hear you being a brat.”

 

“Takes one to know one, Fox.”

 

“Look, I promise I’ll make it up there soon to see you.  Give Kyle kisses for me.”

 

“You’re changing the subject, but since I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this horrible, very bad, crazy, masochistic decision, I guess I’ll just hang up.”

 

“Night, Sam.  Love you.”

 

“I love you too, you moron.”

 

******

 

The office was largely empty the day before Thanksgiving.  Those who had showed up, left early. Most just stayed home.  Mulder hadn’t been assigned a new file since the Icy Cape case, but he wasn’t bothered by it.  He’d collected more of the x-files from Blevins and spent his time linking related files, doing research, and taking notes.

 

Mulder had a meeting scheduled with Blevins mid-morning on Wednesday.  He was actually looking forward to it, to discussing the x-files. He was thinking about requesting a permanent position, in some capacity, working on the x-files.  Even though the files he’d been reviewing were older, his assignments of late seem to fall within the same categories of unusual and difficult to explain. He was intrigued and energized by them.

 

As it turned out, Mulder didn’t have to make too much of a case for himself, Blevins already had the idea to create a unit dedicated to the x-files, and that’s why he’d passed them along.  He’d hoped that Mulder would be as interested as he thought he might be.

 

“You might want to think about a partner, Agent Mulder,” Blevins had said.  “Someone that complements your skill set.”

 

Mulder had nodded.  Obviously, he already had someone in mind, and he thought Blevins might know that.

 

“You’ll continue to report to AD Skinner,” Blevins continued.  “The cases he assigns you to will all be classified as x-files from here on out.”

 

Mulder nodded again.  That all sounded good to him.  He liked AD Skinner and liked working for him.

 

“Did you ever imagine, Agent Mulder, that being unconventional would pay off?”

 

“I can’t say that I did, Sir.”

 

“I didn’t think so.”

 

“Enjoy the holiday, Agent Mulder.”

 

“Thank you, Sir.  Uh, one question,” he said, hesitating as he got out of his seat.

 

“Yes?”

 

“The rest of these x-files.  Where would I find them?”

 

Blevins chuckled mildly.  “In the basement. Where everything else that’s unwanted ends up.”

 

“Well, I want them.”

 

******

 

The basement file storage room was a dark mess of boxes and dust.  Mulder was eager to get started, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere in that kind of clutter.  He wasn’t known for being very neat or organized himself, but the storage room was a veritable pig sty.  He’d need gloves, possibly a mask, and cleaning supplies. Tomorrow being Thanksgiving, he couldn’t start then, but Friday he could.

 

He decided to go home and think about how he would ask Scully to join him on this venture.  Regardless of what his sister thought, he was determined to put her out of his mind once he saw her for himself with her husband.  The problem was, in his estimation, he couldn’t picture her as married until he saw her as married. And once he had that image in his head, he could move on.  He could focus on their potential partnership.

 

He knew she would take some convincing, so he wrote arguments in his head that sounded promising and then he tried them out loud to try to get it right.

 

“I need you with me on this, Scully.  No, that sounds desperate and selfish.  The x-files could really use someone with your expertise.  That’s better. Okay, she doesn’t really respond to flattery, so we need appeal to her innate curiosity.”

 

Mulder took up a basketball that he’d dropped onto a chair in his living room and gave it a few bounces.  It was kind of a jerk thing to do, to bounce a basketball on a fourth floor apartment, but he knew his downstairs neighbor was away for the holidays.

 

“We were close to something in Alaska, closer than people have ever been before, and I know it got away from us, but there’s more out there to discover, more to see, more to solve.  Think of how interesting it would be.”

 

Mulder dropped the ball and bent down to look at the folders he had spread across his desk.  He could select a few to show her, to pique her interest. He was personally really excited about the high rate of Bigfoot sightings in the state of Washington and wanted to look into that at some point, but Scully would never change the trajectory of her career for that.

 

The file with the newspaper clippings about people suffering brain injuries and speaking in different languages and accents, that might do it.  Or the file about the dying woman whose blood incapacitated five hospital staff by its smell. Spontaneous human combustion! She had to want to get her hands on one of those cases.

 

What he really wanted to tell her though, is that he’d come to rely on her in the short time they’d worked together.  She was level headed and thoughtful and grounding, not to mention the fact that she’d saved his skin several times. He wanted to tell her he did stupid things and took unnecessary risks and he’d been lucky so far, but needed someone to watch his back.  And it would be good for him to have to worry about someone other than himself as well.

 

If she wanted examples, he could provide them in abundance, but even most recently, on the Eurisko case, he shouldn’t have entered that building alone.  Maybe if she’d been there, he wouldn’t have had a gun pulled on him. Maybe if she’d been there, they would’ve been able to save the technology and save Wilczek from the clutches of the DOD.  Maybe things would’ve gone more smoothly, like they had in Philadelphia.

 

When he sat down to think about it, all of his arguments seemed rather thin and selfish.  She’d have to change her whole life for this endeavor. Well, maybe not her whole life, but a good portion of it.  She’d be a field agent. She’d have to travel, sometimes at the spur of the moment. It wasn’t the safety of an autopsy bay.  He couldn’t make that decision for her though, whether her answer was yes or no, it was her choice to make.

 

******

 

The first thing Mulder thought, when he walked up to the all brick, Colonial townhouse in Georgetown, was that Dr. Waterston must be a pretty successful surgeon.  The zip code was one of the bests in the city, picture perfect, and highly sought after. That was all outward appearances though, the inside left him with a different impression.

 

Scully opened the door wearing a long-sleeved grey dress, pleated at the skirt, with dark tights.  Her hair was curled and swept up into a twist. Her makeup was dark, hiding her freckles and turning her face into an even shade of chalk.  He wondered how she didn’t fall over in her stilettos. 

 

And then there was the ring.  The enormous, hideous, garish ring on her finger.  It glittered obscenely and looked like it took up half her hand.  No wonder she didn’t wear it to work. He didn’t know a carat from a carrot, but it was probably in the upper range of carats, whatever that might be.  This whole difference in appearance and that monstrosity of a ring stunned him into a moment of frozen shock.

 

“It’s good to see you,” she said.  “Come in.”

 

“Oh.”  He blinked and then thrust the little package in his hands towards her.  “I know you said not to bring anything, but my mother told me never to show up anywhere empty handed.”

 

“Thank you, Mulder.”  She held the door back and that’s when Mulder formed his second impression.  Nothing inside the house looked like a home he’d imagine Scully in. It was more like a place Brad Wilczek would appreciate.  The walls gleamed white and glass seemed to be everywhere. Glass tables, glass fixtures, even a glass staircase. Hideous poster prints of pop art hung in large frames, the color scheme being mostly pastel.

 

“Um, it’s a cornucopia,” Mulder said, trying to cover the fact that he was observing his surroundings with extreme distaste.

 

“Well, that’s festive.  I’ll put it on the table.”

 

A girl in her late teens came around the corner.  She had short, dark hair and piercing, angry blue eyes.  A silver nose ring was looped into her right nostril. She was dressed in what Mulder had learned was called grunge; ripped jean shorts over ripped green tights, a beige and brown flannel shirt tied around her waist over a black tank top.

 

“Maggie,” Scully said.  “This is my friend, Mulder.”

 

“What kind of name is Mulder?” she asked, as Mulder stuck his hand out to her.  She didn’t reach for it, just stared at him with a disinterested gaze.

 

“Dutch,” Mulder answered.  “And my last name.”

 

“Weird.”

 

“Maggie!”

 

Mulder waved to Scully to indicate he wasn’t offended.  If a surly teenager could rankle him, he’d never have been able to join the FBI.

 

“I’m just going to go put this down,” she said, lifting the cornucopia slightly.  I’ll be right back and then show you around.”

 

“How do you know my wicked stepmother?” Maggie asked, as soon as Scully was out of earshot.

 

“Oh, you must be Dr. Waterston’s daughter.”

 

Maggie rolled her eyes and then walked away.  “Pleasure meeting you,” he said and she flashed him a dirty look over her shoulder.  He was alone for the next few moments and was able to give the few rooms in his view another onceover.  There was no way Scully had a hand in decorating this tacky display of money. None.

 

“Sorry about that,” Scully said.  “She’s...become rather rebellious since her parents’ divorce.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, she seemed lovely.”

 

Scully raised her brow as if she knew better and didn’t believe him.  She ushered him through the living area and into a dining area with a rectangular, glass table, already decorated with white linen, glass candlesticks, and wine glasses.  He counted eight plates in total and eight chairs, covered in white cloth. It looked more like a setup for a wedding reception than Thanksgiving. Next was the kitchen, which looked largely unused.  The black granite sparkled. He didn’t smell any food cooking.

 

“Daniel likes to have formal dinners catered,” Scully explained.

 

“Oh.”  He pushed his hands into his pocket and glanced around.  “Where is he?”

 

“Downstairs.  We just finished renovating.  Come.”

 

Off the kitchen, a narrow staircase, surprisingly not made of glass, but white carpet, led them down into a finished basement.  There was a pool table in the middle, with sticks suspended on a rack drilled into the brick, painted white. A big screen TV took up half of the far wall, with two, black leather Lay-Z boy recliners in front of it.  Three men stood in front of the TV, watching a football game on mute, holding glasses of whiskey. Two women sat on the edges of the recliners, turned towards each other, their heads bent in conversation.

 

“Everyone,” Scully said.  “This is a colleague of mine, Mulder.”

 

One of the men turned and sipped his whiskey.  Mulder knew instantly he was Daniel, and instantly disliked him.  He was older, but good looking. His salt and pepper hair had a way of making him look distinguished and not old.  The way he carried himself was with supreme confidence. His blue dress shirt looked liked it had jumped off the ironing board and onto his body, tailormade for him.

 

“Mulder,” he said.  “Would you like a drink?”

 

“No, thank you.”  Mulder knew it was the wrong thing to say.  Men like Dr. Waterston didn’t like men that didn’t drink.  He’d seen a lot of it growing up with his father. It was fine with him though, he didn’t want a man like Dr. Waterston to like him.

 

“That’s Daniel,” Scully pointed out, unnecessarily.  “This is Robert, he works in anesthesiology, his wife Joan, Mike, in radiology, and his wife Leisel.”

 

The men tipped their drinks in acknowledgment and the wives eyed him with suspicion.  He felt out of place and wondered why Scully would bring him into this world. She was unrecognizable to him right now.  He should’ve listened to Samantha.

 

******

 

There was no opportunity for Mulder to speak with Scully about much of anything, let alone the x-files proposition.  Shortly after he arrived, the caterers showed up, and she excused herself to deal with them. He was momentarily worried that he’d have to make conversation with Daniel, but Daniel followed Scully up the stairs as though she was incapable of dealing with food service on her own.  He hung back by the pool table, uninterested in joining the conversation with Robert and Mike, which was clearly about hospital gossip.

 

“You play?” Mike asked him, nodding at Mulder when he spun the cue ball across the felt.  Both he and Robert drifted over to where Mulder stood, sipping their whiskeys.

 

“Not recently,” Mulder answered.  “Billiards, in college.”

 

“What’s your alma mater?”

 

“Oxford.”

 

“Mike and I are both Cornell grads,” Robert said, as though trying to one-up Mulder.  “Class of ‘79, class of ‘74, respectively.”

 

“Guess you have a lot in common.”

 

“You a pathologist?” Mike asked.

 

“My major was psychology.”

 

“How is it that you work with Dana?”

 

“My work brings me in contact with her department on a regular basis.”

 

“We all thought Dana was crazy when she said she was leaving for the FBI,” Robert said.

 

“We still do,” Mike added.  He and Robert both laughed and Mulder tried to turn his wince into a smile.

 

“She’s very good at her job,” Mulder said.  “We’re lucky to have her.”

 

“Yeah, but that’s not place for a woman,” Robert said.  “We told Daniel he shouldn’t let her do it, but you know, he’s indulgent.”

 

Mulder felt his blood pressure rise.  He bit back any of his sarcastic responses and pressed his lips together instead.  These men and their stereotypical misogyny got under his skin, but he didn’t want to make waves, didn’t want to ruin Thanksgiving for Scully by being the cause of strife.  He prayed for dinner to be served soon.

 

******

 

If Mulder thought dinner would save him, he was wrong.  If Mulder thought family drama was worse compared to dining with what he now considered to be his arch nemesis, he was wrong.  His father’s outbursts and his mother’s tears would have been welcomed for what he had to endure at the Waterston Family Thanksgiving.

 

On his left side, he had the stepdaughter who wanted to be anywhere else but at that table, and Mulder couldn’t blame her, but she was making it very obvious that she was extremely put out by the meal.  It started when she refused the turkey on the grounds that she had become vegetarian the week before. Every chance she got, she made a sly dig at either her father or Scully and her behavior was largely ignored, though Mulder could see the distress on Scully’s face whenever shots were fired.  At one point, she pushed her plate of vegetables away and sighed loudly.

 

“Who hired this caterer?” she complained.  “They have no idea how to roast the brussel sprouts, it tastes awful.”  Then, she turned to Mulder and added, he was sure merely to piss Scully off, “my mother is a chef.  Dana doesn’t know how to cook.”

 

Scully, across from Mulder and one chair to the right, looked pained.  Daniel was absorbed in conversation with Robert, on Mulder’s other side.  The two wives, both on the same side of the table as Scully, only glanced periodically at Mulder and preferred to spend their time whispering amongst each other or with Mike.  Since no one was paying attention, he decided to quietly give Maggie a little taste of her own medicine.

 

“You’ve been vegetarian for a week, you said?” Mulder asked.

 

“Yes,” she answered, pushing corn around her plate with her fork.

 

“How’s that going for you?”

 

“Great.”

 

“I noticed you had marshmallows with those yams.”

 

“So.  I love marshmallows.  Marshmallows aren’t meat.  Duh.”

 

“Marshmallows contain gelatin.  You know what gelatin is?”

 

“Jell-O?”

 

“Gelatin.  It’s a protein made by boiling the skin, tendons, ligaments, and bones of a cow or a pig.  Not really vegetarian friendly. Did your mother not tell you that?”

 

Maggie gave him a nasty glare and didn’t speak the rest of the meal, which was fine by him.  That left Robert, to his right, who thought it was appropriate to reminisce about Thanksgivings past, like the time they left the kids with their nannies and he, Joan, Daniel, and Barbara - Mulder gathered that Barbara was the ex-wife - went skiing in Vail.  Or the time that he, Joan, Daniel, and Barbara, rented the beach house in Costa Rica, which was either the year before or the year after he, Joan, Daniel, and Barbara, spent the long weekend in wine country.

 

Whenever Mulder heard the words ‘remember when,’ he started to tune out.  He managed to eat some of his meal without really tasting it. He noticed the wives barely touched their plates, though Mike and Robert went for seconds.  The fact that he’d basically lost his appetite was irrelevant. He would not give anyone a reason to think this Thanksgiving was unpleasant in any way, something he assumed would be blamed on the imagined inadequacies of Scully by the rest of the group.

 

When no one appeared to be eating any longer, Scully got up and began collecting plates.  Mulder got up as well and attempted to help, but she waved him back. He started to protest, but Mike laughed at him from the end of the table.

 

“Always best not to involve yourself in women’s work, Mr. Mulder,” he said.

 

Mulder was horrified, and he sat back door rather gingerly.  Neither of the wives, or Maggie, made any attempt to assist, what with being fellow women and all.

 

“Mulder,” Daniel said.  “Dana tells me you’re somewhat of a pariah at the FBI.”

 

“Pariah?”

 

“An outcast,” he explained, as though Mulder was too stupid to comprehend.

 

“I’m familiar with the word.  I’m just wondering where you got that impression.”

 

“Like I said, Dana’s told me a little about you.”

 

Mulder seriously doubted Scully said anything of the sort.  Daniel probably took what she told him and formed his own malicious opinion and was using it now to attack him now that Scully was out of the room.

 

“I tend to work on cases that aren’t up for general assignment,” Mulder said.  “The ones no one else will touch.”

 

“Grunt work.”  Mike laughed. “Like what we do to the new batch of interns every year, putting them in charge of the sponge baths and catheter implants.”

 

“Yeah,” Mulder said.  “Just like that.”

 

Robert turned to Daniel.  “I told you, buddy, you need to put your foot down and get Dana out of there.  They’ve got her working grunt detail. There’s an opening in pediatrics that she’d be a shoe-in for.  If she’s going to waste her med school training, then she should stay at home, join one of the committees that Joan or Leisel are on.”

 

Daniel shook his head slightly.  “It’s a phase, Robert. I allowed it because I know it’ll pass.”

 

Mulder reached his limit.  He absolutely could not stay in that house a minute longer.  He got up from the table, almost shaking with rage.

 

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said.  “I just realized I have an emergency and need to leave immediately.”

 

“Mulder?”  Scully was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, a pumpkin pie in her hands.

 

“Dinner was lovely,” he told her.  “Thank you for inviting me.”

 

He turned to show himself out.  He’d gotten down the short flight of brick stairs outside before he heard the door open again and Scully came after him, pulling a sweater on over her dress.  He turned to her in the shadows of a street lamp.

 

“Where are you going?” she asked, rushing down to follow him to the walkway.

 

“I need to go,” he said.  “I can’t...I just can’t…”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Who  _ are _ you, Scully?”

 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

 

“What is with this Stepford Wife routine?”

 

“Did Daniel say something to you?  I know he can be a bit-”

 

“No,” he interrupted, and then stepped up toe to toe with her and leaned close.  “Don’t apologize for him. Don’t  _ ever _ apologize for him.  Scully, you nearly bit my head off the day I met you when you thought I was being the slightest bit condescending.  You talk good game about battling the patriarchy, except you didn’t happen to mention that you  _ married _ the patriarchy, for crying out loud.  What was your battle plan there, infiltrating from within?  Because let me tell you, it isn’t working.”

 

Scully’s eyes welled up a little bit and he felt like a horse’s ass.  She’d invited him over for Thanksgiving and all he’d done was judge her house, her friends, storm out, and insult her husband. 

 

“Look,” he said.  “I-”

 

“You’re right,” she cut him off.  He could see her breath in the cool air and she shivered.

 

“Why did you invite me?”

 

She quickly swiped a knuckle across the underside of both eyes.  “My stepdaughter hates me. Those two couples in there are friends of Daniel and Barbara, not me.  My family has...we haven’t communicated much since I married Daniel. I wanted someone of my own to share the holiday with.  You’re my friend, Mulder. You’re...you’re my partner.”

 

“I can’t go back in there, Scully.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I don’t know if you should either.”

 

She laughed, but it sounded like a cough as her breath caught and then her eyes welled again.  “Take me with you?” she whispered up at him.

 

He wanted to.  He wanted to whisk her away from this awful place and these awful people.  He raised his hand and she tipped her head slightly as though she anticipated his touch, but he curled his fingers and shoved his hand in his pocket instead.

 

“God, Scully,” he whispered to her, voice husky with emotion.  “You have to know how badly I want to do just that. I’m...”

 

“Please.”

 

“I am in love with you, Scully.  But, I’m in love with the woman who commands the attention of a task force.  The woman who isn’t afraid to tell me when I’ve gone too far. The woman who won’t take any crap from anybody.  The woman who is brilliant and kind and tough and funny.”

 

Tears spilled over Scully’s eyes and she lowered her head, pressing her sweater-covered fists to her face.  He brought his hand to her shoulder and spoke over her bowed head, watching the windows of the house for prying eyes.

 

“I don’t know who this is,” he whispered.  “I don’t know a woman that would wear these clothes or that ring or live in that house or tolerate those men with their archaic philosophies.”

 

“I know.  I know, Mulder, I...I just...”

 

“I’m here for you,” he interrupted.  “For whatever you need. But, the best thing I can do for you, is to let you do this for yourself.  Dammit, Scully, I want take you away from this  _ so _ badly.  But, it has to be you.  You have to take yourself away.”

 

“I don’t know if I can.  What if this is the price I have to pay?”

 

“You mean, what if this is the punishment you deserve?”

 

She nodded and swiped at her eyes again.  He stepped back and shoved his hands in his pockets again.  He tipped his head back and shifted onto the balls of his feet.

 

“A very wise woman once pointed out to me that I prefer suffering over moving on,” he said.

 

“Do you?”

 

“I don’t know, Scully.  Do  _ you _ ?”

 

They stared at each other for far too long.  His eyes kept dropping to the corner of her mouth, and he noticed that she did the same.  He couldn’t kiss her though, not now, and not in front of her husband’s house.

 

“I should probably…” she whispered, glancing back at the house.

 

“Me too.”

 

“When will I see you again?”

 

“I’m sure I’ll have a case for you soon.  The work never stops.”

 

“Right.  The work.”

 

“Happy Thanksgiving, Scully.”

 

Her mouth quivered a bit and her damp eyes welled again before she nodded and turned around.  He watched her walk slowly away and wrap her arms around herself as she trudged up the stairs.  He bit down hard on the inside of his bottom lip, wanting to call out to her, to just say screw it, come with me and don’t look back, but he let her go and it felt like someone had scooped the inside of his chest out and thrown it on the ground.

 

******

 

Mulder sat in his car, just down the street from the Waterston manse, and rested his head on his steering wheel.  His briefcase of x-files lay on the passenger seat, cold and not a thought given to them all night. It was nearing eight o’clock, dark, cold, and he wanted to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as possible, but he didn’t want to go home.

 

Rhode Island was six, seven hours away depending upon the weather and traffic.  He started the car and before he could talk himself out of it, headed to Quonochontaug.  He only stopped for gas and coffee and managed to make it there just before three. He certainly couldn’t go knocking on his sister’s door in the middle of the night though, so he leaned his head against the window to wait for sunrise.

 

Mulder startled awake by a soft rapping on his window.  The sky was blue-grey with dawn, blurry from the condensation fogging his view, but he could make out his brother-in-law bent by the driver’s door, waving slightly.  His muscles were stiff from the cold and the cramped car, but he managed to unfold himself and get out.

 

“How long you been out here?” Josh asked.  He was in a blue robe and Ugg boots, a mug of coffee in his hand and a plastic-wrapped newspaper under his arm.

 

“Couple hours,” Mulder answered, stretching his back out.  “I didn’t want to wake Kyle.”

 

“Sam’ll kill you if she knows you slept in your car.  Tell her you just got here.”

 

“She won’t believe me.  Good to see you.”

 

“You too.”  Josh clapped Mulder on the shoulder.  “Come in, come in, before you freeze.”

 

“Too late.”

 

The ground was wet with frost so Mulder took his shoes off at the door and followed Josh to the kitchen.  His nephew danced around the kitchen island, in cowboy boots and Spiderman underwear, chanting for pancakes.  His sister was at the stove, cooking pancakes on a skillet.

 

“Fox!” she squealed, abandoning the pancakes to give her brother a hug.  Josh took the turner out of her hand midway and took over at the stove.

 

“Morning,” Mulder said, giving his sister a squeeze.

 

“Kyle, come give your Uncle Fox a hug.”

 

“He doesn’t look like a fox,” Kyle said.

 

“Tell me about it, buddy,” Mulder answered.  He folded himself over at the hips and protected his groin as the little boy came flying towards him, headbutting him in the thigh.  “Oof.”

 

“We’re having pancakes,” he said.

 

“I can see that.”

 

“Did you drive all night?” Samantha asked.

 

“Uh, yeah, I just got here.”

 

“You’re lying.  What did you do?  What happened?”

 

“I came for a big helping of ‘I told you so.’”

 

Samantha sighed.  “Finish the pancakes?” she asked her husband.

 

“On it,” he replied.

 

Mulder followed Samantha into the living room and they both sank down onto the couch.  She tucked her feet up and sat sideways to look at him and he sprawled out with his feet propped on an ottoman.  Toy cars and trucks were scattered around the room and as Mulder sat down, he had to pull a Batman action figure out from behind his back, shoved into the couch cushions.

 

“So, what happened?” Samantha asked.

 

“Her husband is...he’s…”

 

“Prince Charming?”

 

“More like Darth Vader.”

 

“That’s the…”

 

“The evil dude from Star Wars.  Come on, Sam.”

 

“Yeah, okay.  The helmet guy.  James Earl Jones.”

 

“Yes, the helmet guy.  But, worse.”

 

“Who’s worse than the helmet guy?”

 

“Dr. Waterston.”

 

“So, what  _ happened _ ?”

 

Mulder proceeded to give his sister the rundown on the evening, sparing nothing.  Everything from the finer details of the furniture and artwork in the house to the near blow up he’d had at the table.  It took nearly an hour, as Samantha peppered him with endless questions on every subject.

 

“I wish you had,” she said, when he got to the dinner conversation.  “I wish you had stood up and told those idiots how archaic and caveman they sounded.”

 

“I was so close.  I knew though that it would only end in embarrassment for Scully.  They all treated her as though...I was going to say invisible, but not even that.  Like she was of no concern.”

 

“Do you remember Bitsy?”

 

“Okay, don’t even go there.”

 

“No, I mean, it’s different, but you remember?”

 

“Dad’s mistress that he brought to our house, waving her under our mother’s nose all summer at backyard cookouts and family picnics.  No, I completely forgot about her.”

 

“We treated her pretty terribly.”

 

“Were we not supposed to?”

 

“Right or wrong, I’m just saying, from their perspective, she’s the bad guy.”

 

It always irritated him with Samantha professed something that was true, especially when he didn’t agree with it, but he couldn’t argue with facts.  Scully would be the bad guy in the situation, especially where Maggie was concerned. He knew her not to be naive or gullible, but he didn’t know the circumstances under which she entered into the affair with Dr. Waterston.  He’d like to believe she hadn’t gone into it with eyes wide open, but he really didn’t know.

 

“Still,” he said.  “Her husband stays friends with people who treat his wife badly.  That’s not acceptable. His daughter is openly hostile and he doesn’t say a word.  That’s not acceptable either. You don’t treat someone you love like that, or allow them to be treated like that.”

 

“Maybe he doesn’t.”  Sam shrugged. “Love her, I mean.”

 

“How couldn’t he?”

 

“He probably did at one time, but maybe he loved the chase, or the challenge of conquering a student.  He probably got in over his head, got found out, and in order to make it seem like he wasn’t just some two-timing jerk, married her to give off the impression that it was all for love.”

 

“I feel like you watch too many daytime soaps.”

 

Samantha’s leg jerked forward and she kicked Mulder in the shin.  He chuckled and grabbed her foot, pinching her ankle.

 

“What will you do now though?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know.  I’m not sure I can ask her to be my partner now, even if I want to.”

 

“Probably not a good idea.”

 

“I don’t want to complicate her situation.”

 

“No, of course not.”

 

“I just...I know I haven’t known her for  _ that _ long, but...I can’t imagine not having her in my life.  I don’t want to think about her not being there. Even if work is all we ever have, nothing more, I just...”

 

“You did the right thing, though.  She needs to get her situation sorted out and you need to stand back and let her.”

 

“I don’t do standing back very well.”

 

“Yes, well I know  _ that _ .”

 

Mulder pinched Samantha’s ankle again.  “Enough about me. How did you endure the holiday?  Anything I should know about?”

 

“Mom’s new thing is boxed wine.  She was pretty mellow.”

 

“And Dad?”

 

“Didn’t show.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Swear to god.”

 

“Huh.”

 

“Yeah, but…”  Samantha’s gaze drifted towards the windows and she bit her bottom lip.

 

“What’s up?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Sam.”

 

“Josh!”

 

“What!” her husband called, from somewhere in the house.

 

“Can you come in here, please?”

 

“Hang on.”

 

Mulder eyed Samantha suspiciously and she widened her eyes in an expression of innocence like she did when she was a kid and tried to get away with something.  He narrowed his eyes, wondering what she was hesitating to tell him.

 

Josh came into the room, dressed in jeans and a sweater, carrying Kyle, who was also dressed, albeit as Superman, cape and all.  Star Wars was definitely going to be in this kids future, Mulder thought.

 

“What?” Josh asked.

 

“You dressed him in that?” Samantha asked. 

 

“That’s what he wanted.”

 

She shook her head a little.

 

“What’d you need?” Josh asked, setting Kyle down, who scampered to the other side of the room to play with his cars.

 

“Can I…?”  She tipped her head at Mulder.

 

“Up to you.”

 

“I was kind of hoping Dad would be there yesterday, because then I could just get it over with,” she said.

 

“Get what over with?” Mulder asked.

 

“I’m pregnant.”

 

“Mazel tov, that’s great!”

 

“Yeah, um.  We’re also moving to Washington.”

 

“DC?”

 

“No, state.  Josh got the opportunity to head up the west coast office and it just seemed…”

 

“Sam, you don’t have to...Mom will be fine.  Dad is, whatever.”

 

“And what about you?”

 

“You know, I just found out that Washington has the most Bigfoot sightings of any other state.  So, you know, maybe I’ll be a frequent visitor.”

 

“Bigfoot?” Samantha asked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“My cousin saw a UFO once,” Josh said.  “He said it hovered there in the sky for two full minutes and then took off and disappeared.

 

“I might have to look into that,” Mulder said.

 

“Will you stay the day?” Samantha asked.  “The weekend if you want.”

 

Mulder thought about the files he’d intended to go through over the weekend, but his mood had darkened over Thanksgiving and he didn’t really feel like going into the office to be reminded about the partner he couldn’t have.

 

“Yeah,” he said.  “Until tomorrow, at least.”

 

“Yay!”

 

Kyle wandered over, a toy car in each hand.  He drove one of them up Mulder’s outstretched leg, over his knee, and then leaned against the couch.

 

“Uncle Fox is going to stay over tonight, Kyle,” Samantha said.  “Isn’t that great?”

 

“I peed,” Kyle said.

 

Mulder laughed.

 

******

 

Samantha’s house was chaotic, but Mulder hadn’t felt so relaxed in a long time.  He went to his mother’s house for a short visit, and that was difficult, but he had a great time and ended up staying until Sunday.  It took him longer coming back to the city, getting caught in holiday traffic with all the other travelers returning home from the long weekend.

 

He lost a fish on his impromptu vacation, and he took care of the poor guy before he checked the messages on his answering machine.  One was from a credit card company offering him a new low rate of something he didn’t catch because he deleted it part way through, one from his landlord informing him that the heaters would be shut off for a few hours on Monday for maintenance, and one from Scully, which he listened to multiple times, rewinding it and playing it over as soon as he finished.

 

“Mulder,” she said.  “I apologize for calling you at home, but I didn’t want to catch you on your cell phone if you were out.  I also want to apologize to you for how things were the other night. I was hoping that...that things would be more pleasant if I had someone there who...it really doesn’t matter.  I just want you to know that I appreciate you looking out for me.

 

“I’ve given a lot of thought to what you said.  I haven’t stopped thinking about it, actually. And I need to take some time to contemplate things.  I have lost sight of myself in some respects, and I don’t like it. I am unhappy, and I was terrified to say it out loud, but it’s the truth.  I am simply unhappy. And I don’t want to choose suffering over moving on. I don’t want to  _ continue _ to choose suffering.

 

“I won’t be at work on Monday and I don’t want you to worry.  I’ve taken some time off and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I told you once that I left medicine behind because I thought I might make a difference at the FBI.  That wasn’t the whole truth. Being a doctor was not a path I choose, it was a path my father choose for me. I excelled in science in school and being a doctor, he told me, was an acceptable career for a woman.

 

“I told my family, and I told Daniel, that the FBI had recruited me.  The truth is, I sought out the FBI. I never had a passion for medicine, not like I did for forensics.  My background as a doctor was what ultimately got me in the door and for that I’m grateful. I love what I do, and though it may sound strange, I love telling the stories of the dead.  

 

“You have opened my eyes to mysteries I never even considered existed until I met you.  You’ve given me a new passion for mystery itself. You’ve allowed me to appreciate the journey, not the reward.  Sometimes, the journey  _ is _ the reward.  And you have given me the gift of your friendship, for which I will never be able to explain to you how grateful I am.

 

“I have to tell you, I feel ridiculous doing this over an answering machine, but I don’t know if I’d have the courage to tell you all of this face-to-face.  I’m not as brave as you might think I am, but I am trying to be. I should go. I’m surprised this tape hasn’t run out by now. I’ll see you around, Mulder. I just don’t know when.”

 

It wasn’t her words that struck Mulder, though he was moved by what she said.  It was her tone. The way she spoke, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see Dana Scully again.

 

******


	7. Chapter 7

On Monday, Mulder went to work with a bucket of cleaning supplies and starting clearing and somewhat organizing the files in the basement.  The storage room was actually fairly large, and once he’d sorted some things out, moved boxes, and got rid of a lot of excess junk, he had a lot of room to work with.  It took nearly all week, and by the time he was finished, it had started to dawn on him that instead of bringing the files upstairs, he might as well just move his office where the files were.

 

He got approval from AD Skinner, who looked at him like he was crazy, but still signed off on his requisition for a desk.  The deliverymen thought it had been a mistake and called him several times to confirm the desk was being brought to the  _ basement _ ?  Are you  _ sure _ ?

 

After he was settled, he was actually pleased with the space.  Sure, it was a basement, but he had a nice skylight and two rooms.  He’d found a few boxes of old equipment which still worked and though someone else found useless, he set it up in the secondary room that had once gated off whatever someone felt was important enough to gate off in storage.  He now had his own slide projector, lightboard, and a large magnifier that clamped onto a table.

 

What took him the most time, and would continue to take weeks or months, was classifying and cataloging the x-files into something that might be easily referenced.  He’d started out with general categories, but the more he found, the more he’d had to break those into smaller subgenres. It wasn’t enough to label a pile PARANORMAL, he had to then separate sets of files into HAUNTINGS, POLTERGEISTS, ECTOPLASM, and PSYCHICS.  

 

The missing persons stack is the one that really bothered him.  There were hundreds of accounts of people just vanishing off the face of the earth.  At least a dozen of these files, eye witnesses reported seeing strange lights in the sky the night someone vanished.  He separated those files into a group he tentatively labeled ALIEN ABDUCTION.

 

Even though he poured all of his energy into the x-files, every night Mulder went home, he played Scully’s message on his answering machine until he had it memorized.  Sometimes he would pick up his phone and dial part of her number before hanging up.

 

******

 

Mulder’s in depth review of his alien abduction and UFO sightings files turned out to be extremely valuable in the first two cases he was assigned as x-files.  The first was investigating reports from a space program employee on possible sabotage of recent launches. What he found was an astronaut haunted by his previous missions and his belief that an alien entity had possessed him.  The sabotage was his way of protecting other astronauts from suffering the same fate. Mulder suspected PTSD and ordered him into immediate psychiatric care.

 

“You believe him?” Skinner asked, when he filed his report.

 

“It doesn’t matter whether I believe him,” Mulder answered.  “It matters that  _ he _ believes.”

 

And that was his philosophy going into his next case.  A man claiming to be a multiple abductee was arrested sneaking into a crash site of a military test flight.  Everything Mulder had read about in his files encompassed this one man, Max Fenig. He was so thorough in his story that he almost had Mulder convinced it was true.  When Mulder started a deep dive into Fenig’s life, trying to corroborate his account of events, the jittery guy vanished without a trace. Only this time, it was Mulder who could attest to seeing strange lights in the sky the night Max Fenig disappeared.

 

“Is this really how you want to spend your time?” Skinner asked.  “Chasing lights in the sky?”

 

“Sometimes it’s the journey that’s the reward,” Mulder answered.

 

“Holly has your new file.  No little green men in it, I’m afraid.”

 

“Grey.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“You said green.  A Reticulan’s skin tone is actually grey.  Allegedly due to iron depletion in the Reticulan Galaxy.”

 

Skinner’s eyes twitched behind his glasses and he started at Mulder.  Mulder gave him a slight smile.

 

“Makes you wonder what liver and onions goes for on Reticula, doesn’t it, Sir?” Mulder asked.

 

“Go get your file, Agent Mulder.”

 

******

 

Mulder gets two more cases in before everything shuts down for Christmas and New Years.  Both cases bring him back to Quantico, where the halls feel empty to him without Scully there.  He knocks on her door, ‘shave and a haircut,’ but no one answers. It’s not like he expected to find her there, but his heart still pounded with a nervous, quick-flutter of anticipation.

 

One of the cases, in addition to forcing him to deal with a childhood fear of fire, also put him in contact with a classmate from Oxford.  He hadn’t known Inspector Phoebe Green very well in school, mostly because she was a year ahead of him and they didn’t travel in the same social circles, but universities are like small worlds, and he certainly knew of her.  She apparently knew of him as well and asked for his assistance on a matter in Boston, where she was acting as security for a British ambassador. 

 

Inspector Green made no secret of the fact she was interested in Mulder, and let him know she’d had a crush on him in school.  They attempted a date, which consisted of an awkward dinner at his hotel that was interrupted by a fire alarm, and when it turned out she happened to be sleeping with her married boss, amongst a variety of other men, it was just as well that Mulder was too preoccupied with daydreams of Scully to care very much.

 

On Christmas Eve, Mulder headed to The Headless Woman for a drink before heading home.  The place was packed, something of an agent hangout, and by the looks of it, they all had the same idea.  He tossed one back with a guy he used to work with in VCU and they played a game of catch up. He showed Mulder a picture of his daughter, told him his wife was expecting next month, which reminded him that he needed to call Samantha.

 

After parting ways with his old friend, Mulder took a seat at the bar to finish his beer and order one more.  He caught AD Skinner’s eye when he sat down, and his boss nodded and then approached, taking the seat next to Mulder.

 

“Sir,” Mulder said.  “Happy holidays.”

 

“You as well, Agent.”

 

“Can I buy you one?”

 

“It’s on me, actually.”  Skinner flashed two fingers at the bartender.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“I’m glad I caught you in here, actually.  I just spoke to the British Ambassador regarding your arsonist case.”

 

“Did the Marsden’s get back to England alright?”

 

“As far as I know.  They’re requesting we extradite L’Ively to stand trial in England.”

 

“We’d only have him for attempted murder here.  They can pin six murders on him back in jolly old England.”

 

“Attempted murder of a federal agent.”

 

“The burns are minor.”  Mulder shrugged and took a sip of his fresh beer.

 

“According to Inspector Green, you ran into a burning house.”

 

“There were kids upstairs.”

 

“You need to think about getting a partner, Agent Mulder.”

 

“There’s only one person that qualifies, Sir, and she’s unavailable.”

 

“You’re referring to Agent Scully, I take it?”

 

“I am.”

 

“I see.”

 

“And in the interim?  Should I let you get yourself killed?”

 

“Like I said, the burns are minor.”

 

“Luck runs out eventually.  You need someone to watch your back.”

 

“I know.  But, I happen to think she’s worth waiting for.”

 

“If you don’t get yourself killed in the meantime.  Do you even know if she would want to take this on? She’s a pathologist, not a field agent.”

 

“Something tells me she would.”

 

Skinner sighed and downed a generous swig of his beer.  He pushed off the barstool and opened his wallet, taking out a few bills and tossing them onto the bartop.  He looked like he wanted to say more, but he put his wallet away and rested his hand on Mulder’s shoulder for a moment.

 

“I need to get home to my wife,” he said.  “Enjoy the holidays.”

 

“I didn’t know you were married.”

 

“20 years.”

 

“Happy holidays to you and your wife.”

 

“See you in the new year, Agent.”

 

******

 

Mulder’s favorite piece of equipment, by far, was his slide projector.  He liked standing in front of magnified images in the half-dark, focusing on details might normally be lost to the naked eye.  It helped him put information together and visual a crime scene better. And it was just fun to click through each image. He even enjoyed the click and shuffle sound the projector made when he changed slides.

 

It was just after New Years and he was sorting his slides on his lightboard, numbering and marking them to drop into the carrel.  There was a knock on his door, which was unusual. Someone must be lost, he thought.

 

“Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted,” he called, without even looking up from his slides.

 

He was sure whoever it was on the other side would go away, but the door opened, and he heard the tap of high heels approach.  He looked up and felt his cheeks burn with the pull of a suppressed grin.

 

“You lost?” he asked.

 

“No,” Scully answered.  “I’ve been assigned to work with you.”

 

“Who did you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?”

 

“Actually, I’m looking forward to it.”

 

“Well, isn’t it nice to suddenly be so highly regarded.”

 

“I’ve always regarded you highly, Agent Mulder.”

 

“Likewise, Scully.”  He didn’t stop the smile from spreading this time.

 

A moment passed where they gazed at one another in silence and then Scully turned her head slightly to inspect the room.  She walked it slowly, touching his equipment with her fingertips, leaning closer to get a better look at the photos he’d tacked to a corkboard.  She looked up at the skylight and then turned back around to face him.

 

“Well, I’d say you moved up in the world,” she said.  “But, that’s not really the case.”

 

“It’s still the nicest office I’ve ever had.”

 

“It’s a little small.”

 

“Well, don’t worry, I’m sure we can squeeze another desk down here, maybe put them face to face and we can play a nice game of Battleship.”

 

Scully chuckled.  She looked past his shoulder at the poster behind his desk and moved closer to it.  It was of a blurry UFO in flight with the words I WANT TO BELIEVE underneath.

 

“That’s interesting,” she said.

 

“I found it in a head shop on Avenue M,” he answered.  “Seemed appropriate for the new digs.”

 

“I like it.”

 

He had a million questions for her.  How was she? What had she been doing the past two months?  Did she really want this job? Was she still with Daniel? Did everyone eat the pumpkin pie after he’d stormed out?  She turned away from him like she knew what he was thinking and inspected the second cork board next to his poster.

 

“You know,” he said.  “I was told I’d have final say on who they assigned down here.”

 

“Would you like to see my resume?” she murmured, fingering the corner of the Jersey devil tacked to the lower left side of the board.

 

“How about a test?”

 

“I was always pretty good at pop quizzes.”

 

“I bet you were,” he answered, loading the carrel on top of the projector.  “Could you kill the lights?”

 

Scully crossed in front of the light of the projector, creating a silhouette of herself on the screen.  When the room was dark, Mulder dropped the first slide. It was a photo of a young girl. He clicked his remote to move to the next slide, a photo of a young man.

 

“Elizabeth Hawley and James Summers,” he said.  “Both 19. Two days ago, they were reported missing from Jackson University.  One year ago, another couple went missing from Duke University. One week later, they found the bodies of both students.”

 

As he spoke, he shuffled through a few more slides from the Duke University murders.  Photos of the bodies, the crime scene, a newspaper headline.

 

“The Duke kids were kept alive,” he continued.  “Tortured throughout their seven day ordeal, before they were killed.”

 

“You think we’re looking for a serial killer or a copycat?” she asked.

 

“No arrests were ever made.  Police believed it to be a one-time offender at the time.  It now appears it may be a serial.”

 

“If he holds true to form, that only gives us five days to find these students.”

 

“Pretty grim deadline.”

 

“I’ll say.”

 

“Well, here’s another grim deadline.”  Mulder handed Scully a file before he clicked to another photo of a death row inmate.  “In one week, Luther Lee Boggs will take a seat in the North Carolina gas chamber.”

 

Scully looked up briefly at the slide and then perused the file in her hand in the light from the projector.  Her head was bent over and the spotlight caught her cheek in a way that made her look ethereal. Mulder swallowed, losing his train of thought.

 

“How is he related?” Scully finally asked, lifting her head.

 

“Uh, he claims to have information relating to the kidnapping,” Mulder said, touching his wrist.  “He described Hawley's bracelet down to the last detail, information that only family members could have known.”

 

“I don’t understand.  Is he the killer?”

 

“Not likely.  He’s been in prison for the last seven years.  My profile actually put him there.”

 

“Maybe he’s orchestrating the killings from the inside.”

 

“He claims to have obtained this information through psychic transmission.”

 

“Psychic transmission?”  Scully closed the file in her hands and crossed her arms.  She raised her brows at Mulder in the habit he’d grown accustomed to.

 

“Do I detect a hint of skepticism?”

 

“No, I can’t imagine why you’d think that.”

 

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t believe it either.”

 

“Really?”

 

Mulder shrugged.  “Boggs has been in the chamber before. He was actually strapped to the chair before receiving an executive stay.  He claims that this experience activated in him the ability to channel spirits and demons.”

 

“That’s what you don’t believe.”

 

“There are scores of x-files on psychic ability.  I have to believe there’s some truth there, even if it can’t be proved.  But, not in this case. Not Boggs.”

 

“And I take it you’ve read all those files.”

 

“I did.”  Mulder waved his hand towards the filing cabinets in the shadows behind him.  “They’re all there, in alphabetical order if you want to take a look.”

 

“That might prove helpful.  So, if you believe in the phenomenon, why not Boggs?”

 

Mulder raised his finger and brushed past Scully to turn the lights back on.  He took the file she’d closed from under her arm and flipped the pages until he found the one he wanted.  He folded the page back and gave the file back to Scully.

 

“At the age of six, Luther Boggs slaughtered every pet animal in his housing project,” she read out loud.  “When he was 30, he strangled five family members over Thanksgiving dinner and then sat down to watch the fourth quarter of the Detroit-Green Bay game.  Some killers are projects of society. Some act out past abuses. Boggs kills because he likes it. This is from your profile?”

 

“It is.  Boggs has read it and he believes I'm the only one who truly understands what he is.  Anyway, I leave for Raleigh this afternoon. But...”

 

“But?”

 

“I only put in a travel req for one ticket.  We’ll have to grab another TRA.”

 

“Do I have the job then?”

 

“You have the job.”

 

Scully smiled a little and looked down at her feet for a moment.  “I should tell you, so you’re aware, I left Daniel. I’ve filed for divorce.”

 

Mulder opened his mouth, but hesitated to say anything.  He was glad, but he couldn’t tell her that. “I’m sorry, Scully.”

 

“I’m not.”  She looked up at him and gave a swift shake of her head.  “It needed to be done.”

 

“Still though.”

 

She stared up at him with a passive smile.  Her eyes held his and he found it impossible to look away.  The air between them felt thick. He wished the lights were still off so he could see her in the glow of the projector again.  He wondered if her cheek was as soft as it looked and he reached up to touch it.

 

“I am sorry,” he said, softly.  

 

“And I’m not,” she said again, reaching up to put her hand over Mulder’s.

 

“I told myself it would be enough to just see you again, to work with you, and nothing more.”

 

“You tend to believe some pretty fantastic things.”

 

“This is probably the only time I’ll ever say this, but I hope you prove me wrong.”

 

“I think I’ll make proving you wrong a part of my job description.”

 

“I don’t want to be a rebound for you, Scully.  So, whatever time you need, whatever space-”

 

“If you need time and space, Mulder, that’s alright with me, but I don’t.  I didn’t leave Daniel for you, I left him for me. You were right. It’s something that  _ I _ needed to do.  And what I want now is to be with someone who likes who I am.”

 

“Oh, I definitely like who you are.  A lot. A lot, a lot, a lot.”

 

She smiled and pressed her cheek a little more firmly into his hand.  He pressed his lips together and swallowed. He wanted to kiss her, but she had a way of throwing his confidence off-kilter.  It probably wasn’t the time or place, either. They were at work, they had a case to solve. They had to be able to focus and if his lips were introduced to hers, he knew he wouldn’t be able to think.

 

“I guess we better get to the airport,” he said.

 

“I guess so.”

 

He nodded and started to pull his hand away.

 

“There is just one more thing though,” she said, reaching up to curl her hand over the back of his neck.  She pulled his head down and tipped her face up to press her lips to his. Their mouths moved open to each other at the same time, no coaxing or hesitation.  Both her arms went around his neck and his around her back. She had to arch and he had to bend so that their bodies pressed flush against each other.

 

For however long it lasted, too long and not long enough, Mulder felt the whimper she gave vibrate from her chest to his.  It made him gasp and their mouths broke apart, but they stayed locked together, her forehead pressed to his cheek and her breath on his jaw.

 

“Sorry if that was unprofessional,” she breathed.  “But, I had to.”

 

“I won’t be filing a complaint with HR any time soon.”

 

They both took a few more moments to breathe and then relaxed their holds on each other in increments.  Scully finally stepped back and immediately he felt the loss of her. She ran her finger along the bottom of her lip where her lipstick had smudged, which he knew she’d have to fix before they left, but he also kind of didn’t want her to.  And then she was reaching up and rubbing her thumb against the corner of his mouth and he couldn’t keep the stupid grin off his face.

 

“Do you think Blevins had this in mind when he assigned you down here?” he asked.

 

“Blevins didn’t assign me, AD Skinner did.”

 

“Skinner?”

 

“He called me yesterday.  Asked me to meet with him when I returned from my leave.”

 

“If you need more time.”

 

“I do  _ not _ need more time.  I had to get some things sorted out, but I am back where I want to be.”

 

“It isn’t pathology.”

 

“My place is here with you now.  On the x-files. Where I choose to be.”

 

“Raleigh, then?”

 

“After you.”

 

“Got your Dramamine?”

 

“I think I’ll be okay.”

 

“I should call the airline.  Ask them if they can book us seats together.”

 

“If they can’t, I’ll just ask the person in the middle to switch.  I’ll tell them I need to sit with my partner.”

 

“Wait.”  Mulder stopped just before they went through the door and went back to his filing cabinet.  He searched for a file labeled DC-X-167512 - VISIONARY ENCOUNTERS WITH THE DEAD and took it out, along with a few files behind it.  He gave them to Scully. “Some light reading for the plane.”

 

“This is going to be a hell of an adventure.”

 

“Sometimes the journey is the reward, so some wise woman once said.”

 

“Sounds like you have a lot of wise women in your life.”

 

“I guess I’m just pretty damn in this life.”

 

“Come on, Mulder.  Take me to Raleigh.”

 

The End

 


End file.
